


Beware the dead, Fear the living.

by alucardismaster



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 18:08:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alucardismaster/pseuds/alucardismaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've survived in this world for over a month and a half now, not bad for a 12 year old. I've made a pact with myself to never become part of a group or let anyone else survive along with me. But then I had to save some red headed girl, Sophia, from some walkers. I broke my pact and said I'd help her find her mom that's with the rest of her group. Don't let this be a mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters of The Walking Dead, just my OC’s.

Author’s note: This is kinda of a first try at writing this, but forewarning, I am going to change the story line slightly, just by saving Sophia, from then on, well, let’s see how this works out. For more clarification, I’m following the T.V series, I haven’t read all the comics yet.

      The tree I’m climbing isn’t exactly fit to sleep in, primarily because the bottom branches are too close to the ground, secondly though, it had thorns on the outer part of the branches that have been scratching me every time I climb up to a higher branch.

      The trunk of said tree was five feet across, wider than I am tall by about four inches, so I’m pretty sure it’ll hold me. Besides, it’s not like a 98 pound twelve year old can put that much strain on a branch, right?

      I sigh as I drag my body over the branch that I decided earlier would be my bed for tonight. My ruger 10/22 swayed slightly and rattled a little bit more as it hung from the single point strap that was wrapped around my neck. I carefully turned around and sat down on the branch and removed my backpack with skilled practice, balancing on the tree was tricky the first couple of times I did this, but after a few weeks I got used to it. I unzipped my bag and pulled out the tightly wound rope with knots in it from the smaller section of my pack and then zipped it back up, I’ve accidentally knocked it off before unzipped, needless to say, it wasn’t a fun few hours. I unclipped the heavy grade D-link from one of the loops on my pack and then loop the end of the rope through it and then pull the D-link back through.

       I put the pack back on and unwound the rest of the rope, then turned on the branch to where I was straddling the branch and facing the trunk. I let the weighted end slide down about eight feet and started to swing it back and forth, cursing when it hit the branch below it. I started swinging it again and soon got enough momentum to get it up high enough, I then maneuvered the rope to where it started to wrap around the tree. After about six times of being able to wrap it around the tree fully, each time it climbed higher and higher, but on the seventh time I was able to catch the D-link end. My ruger had swayed slightly with every swing, but I wasn’t enough noise to worry about.

       I undid the D-link knot and tied the rope securely to the tree with a bowline knot that grandpa had taught me from the first time he took me hunting, at six. Tugging on the rope to make sure it was secure, I turned around and put my back to the tree and scooted up as close as possible to it and then wrapped the rope securely around my waist, making sure that it looped through the length of rope that I had attached to the tree. Sighing at the comfortable feeling of being secure, you learned soon enough that it was less awkward than you think and much more relaxing.

       I had gotten the idea from reading The Hunger Games, except I just used a rope instead of a belt, it seemed a little bit more helpful, though it wasn’t exactly original.

       Looking out through the leaves and limbs, I see the sun almost ready to start to disappear into the horizon, I’d say in about thirty more minutes before the night came. I looked down over the edge, it still kinda freaked me out about being fifteen or so feet off the ground, but aw well. It took me a second to find my rolling duffel bag lying down on the ground next to a shrub with the camouflage covering I had draped over it. Now, a duffel isn’t exactly the greatest idea to bring into a forest, but grandma had found one that had beyond decent wheels and was sturdy enough to trek through the rough terrain, so she bought it and tested it, it passed. The spacious confines of the duffel was excellent to pack plenty of supplies, and a small amount of personal items as well. Added along with my backpack, which is built more specifically for women, but sidelined for people of a short statue, I had plenty of space that allowed me to carry supplies and be quick about it.

       I brought up my ruger and started to inspect it. Grandpa and Grandma were big fans of 22’s, more specifically, ruger’s, so they bought me one when I showed interest in them. Lucky me that we all use to go to gun show’s when they came along every other odd week or so, I was able to buy aftermarket add-on’s to it, and they had supported me whole heartedly with that idea. I had taken the original stock and replaced it with a lighter synthetic one that had a foldable stock, and then attached a magazine release lever that wrapped around the trigger guard, that made it much easier to reload. After that, I attached a few picatinny rails to the top of the receiver and near the end of the stock, then attached a cheap but decent scope and a forward pistol grip for balance and stability.

       I pushed down on the lever with my finger and took out the magazine’s from the well. I say magazine’s because I had three of the standard ten round rotary magazines attached to a coupler, allowing thirty rounds to be out and not in the way. I cleared the breech and caught the .22 bullet and then stuck it back in the magazine it had come out of. Pointing the end of the barrel at the sun, I eyed the inside of the breech and looked down the barrel’s inside to check if any dirt got in, and how dirty it was. I needed to clean it soon, from the gunpowder, not dirt from the ground. I was going to have to find an overturned bus or the top of a building soon, a DCOA of it would be great, and so would the pistol I have and a few strokes on the wet stone for my knife and screwdrivers would be good as well.

       Popping the magazine back into the well and then loading it, I let the ruger slide down the side and reached for pistol in the holster that was wrapped snugly around my belt and had been supported by a strap that looped through my belt. I grasped the pistol firmly and unsnapped the strap around it and pulled it out. The pistol belong to grandma originally, it was a anniversary/Christmas/birthday gift in one from grandpa and me. It was a Kel-tec PMR 30, a .22 magnum pistol that held thirty rounds with a threaded barrel. She had loved it and used it loyally for protection and to exact justice, in this world now-a-days, that wasn’t that hard, but was often. She had used it to the end, then she finally gave it to me in her last few minutes. Grandpa had somehow found a silencer for it, but I hardly used it, mainly because I didn’t know if you had to cleaned it or what, and if I did, how was the question. Mostly, I just used subsonic ammo.

       I hit the mag release on the butt of the handle and popped the magazine out, then laid it down on my lap. I turned the pistol over and racked the slide to eject the bullet in it, it collided with my leg and jumped up, but I clamped my other hand down on to stop it from falling down, thus making me try to retrieve it. I had already gone to the bathroom and all that jazz, I didn’t want to have to go back down till morning. Sighing in relief, I picked up the bullet and carefully with one hand slide it home into the magazine. Doing the same eye inspection on the kel-tec as I had done to the ruger, I found it in the same shape. I pulled the trigger a few times to dry fire it and see how the action felt, it wasn’t sluggish or slow, but it would be a good idea to take it apart and get rid of the fowling inside it.

       I picked up the magazine and popped it back into place and pulled back on the slide to load it. I put it into the holster on my right thigh again and strapped it back into place. On either side of the main holster, are two extra slots that I had put magazines for the kel-tec in. I had to be careful though on how I distributed my weight on my thigh. The magazines were made of a polymer plastic material, and if I wasn’t careful I could break them, and it’s a bitch to replace them without the internet.

       I took a mental account of everything I had on me, a few extra twenty-five round magazines for the ruger are in the side pouches of the hop belt of my pack. My speed loader full of .22’s was inside the main padded compartment, my water bladder was full in case I got thirsty. My 13 inch kukri blade was strapped to my left thigh in its sheath, I had sown in a tube like pouch into the side of the sheath, so I had an 8 inch screwdriver in it. Then there was the tomahawk I had next to the kukri, it had a spike on the end and was made throwing and close quarter combat, so I was ready. Putting the ruger in my lap and reached into my hoodie pocket and pulled out my Ipod and headphones.

       Grandpa had found a tiny solar panel the size of an Iphone that could charge anything with a USB port attached, I had a battery charger that could accept USB as well, so yeah for batteries and solar power. And with an Ipod shuffle, I got decent battery out of it, now the problem was keeping the headphones intact. I knew every song on it, and the symbols were worn off. This was one of the few pleasures left of the old world, and music was highly valued by a lot of people, still is. And to retain some old fraction of normality before everything went to hell, well, it was great and a major blessing. Thank god for grandparents that liked to hunt and were prepper’s, well, slightly prepper’s.

       Everything I owned now, was either handed down to me, or I worked for. It’s good to still say you own something that is completely yours from before everything, before the dead started rising and eating people.

       I put an earbud into my ear and wrapped the cord around the back of my neck and was getting ready to clip the ipod to the cord, when I heard a fallen branch snap and the shuffling of leaves. I freeze for a moment, not breathing. I heard more shuffling and snaps, then crunches of footfalls, followed by shuffling. I quickly and quietly put up my ipod and brought up my ruger, I put two fingers on either side of the safety button, and slowly I pushed it on to fire from safe. It made a soft clicking noise that felt like an earthquake and sounded like a banshee shrieking it’s head off to me. I heard the tale tell moans of them.

       Walkers.

       I didn’t say anything but narrowed my eyes, the sun was about twenty minutes away from setting, so a few of nature’s natural critters were out, the walkers are probably shambling after them. Then I heard a feminine cry of fear, causing my eyes to widen slightly. My breath hitched as my body stiffened, my heart pounding in my ears.

       Gripping both sets of pistol grips, I breathed in slowly through my nose and tried to keep calm. It’s probably some woman that tried to hoof it on her own and got caught by a few stragglers when she passed to close to the side of the road. She was probably scratched or bitten and trying to fight for her last few minutes or hours of life before she turned.

       The shuffling and snapping was growing louder and louder, soon whimpers and slight sobs came from my right. I looked over towards a slight clearing that was about twenty feet away from me, then I noticed how the shrub my duffel was next to was in a direct line from the trail clearing, if anyone or thing decided to run, or shuffle, they’d most likely trip over it. The whimpers were getting closer and louder.

       “Shit.” I cursed softly, and then started to unravel the rope around my waist. I had put the rest of it in the gap between my back and the tree that my pack didn’t cover, so when I undid the length around my waist, I made sure to pull it out of the loop that I had wrapped it through. I glanced back at the clearing and saw branches ruffling and swaying slightly. I quickened my work and soon had the rope hanging downward but wrapped around the branch once for added protection in case the bowline didn’t work out all that well. The rope was thirty-five feet long with the knots in it, the knots were obviously for ease when going up or down the rope.

       I grasped the rope and turned around slowly, stepping on a lower branch till I could safely stand. I wrapped my feet around the rope and put a extra hand on the rope, then started to quickly, but safely, make my way down the knotted rope. I noted that the noises were getting closer and closer, and the sobs were getting more and more frequent. I finally reached the bottom of the rope and quickly turned around, bringing up my ruger and doing a swift survey of my surroundings. I didn’t see any walkers, but I did notice that the woman and her group of walkers were getting closer and closer.

       I didn’t just wanna stand here and tell her to get down if she came out of the clearing, so I quietly ran to corner of the clearing and crouched down behind a bush. What the hell am I doing? Why am I playing hero for some woman I don’t even know? Hell, she could just be part of some group that uses her as bait to draw out wishful hopefuls who think they can be knight and shining armor.

       The tree line where I hear the noises was shuffling around a lot, the moans and hisses of the walkers were getting more and more frequent. I heard heavy breathing from the woman as she got closer and closer.

       I didn’t need to save her, I could just reposition my duffel and climb back up my tree as soon as the walkers were past. The chances of that happening again are high, I won’t let that happen again. I WON’T!

       The brush of the tree line exploded in a slight cloud of leaves. My eyes widened drastically as I saw the person, it wasn’t a woman, it was a girl, a girl about my age. She had red hair, wore a blue shirt with a rainbow on the front, white kaki’s, I think kaki’s at least, and she held a rag doll in her hands close to her chest.

       I cursed silently again, if this was some ploy, these bastards were gonna pay big time. the girl looked over her shoulder, her eyes full of fear. And they were full of fear for a good reason, because three walkers stumble/shuffled/thriller’d out from the tree line. One was a woman that had a torn dress that was ragged, her skin was dark and bloated, part of the flesh covering her mouth was gone. She walked with a limp and an arm behind her, broken and gnarled. The other two where both male, one wore a bloodstained suit with its stomach hanging out from a hole bitten through his suit, he could move best out of the three. The last one that was in the back of the group looked like a backwoods hick, a mullet and what used to be a beer gut barely covered by a wife beater and some ugly looking plaid shirt that didn’t even look comfortable. Its arms were down at the side, both hands missing with chunks out of its arms, I saw handcuffs dangle from what was left of its left wrist.

       I didn’t want to alert any more walkers to our location, lord knows the girls screams would bring some over if she didn’t stop soon. I let the ruger fall silently and pulled out my screwdriver from its homemade sheath. I had covered the handle with electrical tape around the middle to ensure a better grip, a trick I learned from grandma. The girl sobbed, then turned her head back, right as she tripped over my duffel.

       SHIT! I let the walkers pass the bush as the girl layed on her face stunned for a few seconds, then quickly and silently got out from behind it. The walkers were about fifteen feet away from her as she turned on her back slowly. I creeped up behind the mullet walker as it straggled behind the rest of the group, my screwdriver in my right hand. The walker was taller than me by almost a foot so I was going to have to find a way to bring it down to my size. The girl screamed as her eyes fixated on the suit walker. I didn’t want to say anything to alert the walkers.

       I got up right behind the walker, I noticed the smell was slight compared to how they first started out. I reached up as it leaned back to stagger forward, I could never explain why some did it that way, and grabbed ahold of its shirt collar with my left hand and yanked. The walker started to moan something, but I cut if off with a thrust of my screwdriver into the back of the base of its neck, going into its skull and brain. The zombie stiffened then crumpled as I twisted the screwdriver and pulled it out as it went to its knees. The woman walker slowed slightly but the suit walker didn’t stop, it kept on charging for the girl, who wasn’t screaming anymore.

       I sidestepped the walker I had dropped and took long strides to reach the woman walker, who was turning her head slightly. I cursed mentally as the walker turned, then without reacting, I stabbed at it with my screwdriver, burying it in the walker’s throat. The woman walker did a gurgling hiss and reached out to me. I stepped back away from it and put my hand down to left side and grasped for the head of my tomahawk. I took one more step back, hitting my heels on the hick walker, and quickly pulled out the tomahawk and repositioned my hands.

       The woman walker had shuffled further and let out a louder hissing gurgle, and the suit walker had stopped walking and had turned it’s head. I raised up my tomahawk, the spike end facing the walker, then jumped up slightly and buried the spiked end into the walker’s forehead. It reached out for me for a few seconds before the hand finally fell to its side useless. I tugged on the tomahawk and tried to pull it out, but got a little resistance as the walker fell down to its knees. The suit zombie was facing me and let out a moan and started to walk. I cursed again and put my foot on the walkers bloated chest and pushed against it while pulling the tomahawk. It gave way after a few seconds, I pushed the walker to the side and raised up the tomahawk again, this time with the axe edge facing forward.

       The walker let out one more groan, and then I brought my arm forward, letting go quickly and snapping wrist as it left my grasp. The tomahawk flew end over end twice before the blade buried itself deep into the walkers head, just above the nose bridge. It fell forward even more lifeless than before.

       I sighed in relief, then narrowed my eyes and looked at the girl, who was staring at me wide eyed in shock, awe, and a small trace of fear. “You see that tree behind you?” I ask her, keeping my voice low.

       She slowly turns around and looks at the tree I had climbed and let the rope down. She turned back around to face me and shook her head yes. “Who-”

       “Not now.” I tell her. “The chances of more walker’s coming around is to high, I want you to climb up that tree till you get to the end of the rope. Get up there and cling to the tree, understand?” I had put my foot on woman walkers shoulder and started to push it over.

       “But-”

       “Look, just try to climb the rope as high as possible.” I pushed harder against the walker and it flipped over onto its back, exposing its neck, and my screwdriver. “I’ll help you up the rest of the way if you need it. NOW GO!” I whisper/yelled the last part.

       She didn’t need to be told twice, she got up to her feet and went to the tree. I bent down and wrapped my hands around the handle of the screwdriver, putting my foot on the forehead of the walker to make sure it stayed down. I pulled on it three times before I managed to pull it out, guess I must have got it jammed between the vertebrate. I looked back up at the girl and saw that she was a third of the way up the tree already, she was having trouble getting her footing on a branch and keeping her doll under her arm.

       I raced to the other walker and found its head twisted slightly as the rest of its body laid like the others. Not wanting to waste more time before the light went away, the shadows were already long enough as it was, I just grabbed the end of the tomahawk and started to wriggle it loose. After a second of wiggling, I tugged it and it came free. I put the screwdriver and the tomahawk back in there sheaths and went to my duffel. The netting was detached slightly, so I wrapped it back up and put it behind the  bush, why I didn’t before was pure stupidity on my behalf.

       I looked back up at the tree and found the girl about to reach the branch where I had made my camp for the night. Taking a quick survey of the surrounding woods, I found nothing but disappearing light. I made my way to the rope and started to climb up it, soon I was up on the tree limb, staring at the girl as she hugged the trunk and looked back.

       “Who…who are you?” she asks.

       “You know, since I saved your life first, how bought you tell me who you are first.”

       She furrows her brow, forgetting the fear slightly. “I asked you first.”

       I crossed my arms, keeping my balance and hold with my legs and stared at her. “Yeah, and I stabbed three walkers in the head saving you.”

       She sighed and relaxed slightly. “Fine. I’m Sophia Peletier.”

       I smiled and gave her my hand. “Micah Grave.” She slowly took my hand and shook it softly. She had no grip whatsoever, and I saw old bruises on her wrist and upper arms, they looked finger shaped. Walkers do grab ahold of people hard enough to bruise, but that was more around they’re lower arms and wrist’s. the bruises were yellow and faded out, and I saw a slight scar on her wrist as well, it looked jagged. “Before we get down to the basics  of chatter and talk, lets get some more important things out of the way. Have you gone to the bathroom yet? We have less than 10 minutes of sunlight left, so I need to know now.”

       She nodded her head no. “I just got done using the bathroom when they found me.”

       I nodded my head, then narrowed my eyes. “Alright then, now the more important question. Where you scratched or bitten?” I couldn’t see any obvious blood stains, and I could tell if there would be blood since her clothes weren’t exactly dark and red.

       “NO!” she shouted. I shushed her harshly and looked around on the ground, I didn’t see any walkers around.

       “Alright then. So here is what’s going to happen, I’m going tie myself to the tree first, then I’ll tie you to me so we can sleep well tonight, I’m not asking or answering any more questions till the chances of falling off are decreased drastically.”

       She looked at me, then at the tree. “That’s a good idea and all, but wouldn’t it be better if I was attached to the tree and you to me? You have the weapons and all.”

       I stared at her, then let out a groan of annoyance and smacked myself in the head. “Fine.”

       She giggled at me. “Besides, I think it’d be better with the taller person in the back.”

       I glared at her. “Look, your eight inches taller than me, big whoop. Remember, I was the one who saved your ass.”

       She pouted at me. “Kids shouldn’t use words like that.” She berated.

       “I’m 12 goddamn it!” I whispered harshly. She blinked, then looked like she didn’t believe me. “Just because some you’re the national average height of a 12 year old doesn’t mean everyone else is.”

       She winced and quickly bowed her head down and attached herself to the tree more. “Sorry.” She whispered. I had the feeling she’s been reacting like that to a lot over the pass couple of years, and none of it had to do with walkers.

       I sigh and scotch forward, wincing slightly as I scooted over a knob on the tree branch. “Look, I didn’t mean to yell at you, I’m sorry.”

       She looked at me, then shook her head. “It’s fine, thanks for saving me.”

       I smiled at her and nodded my head. “It’s okay, now, face me and place your back against the tree as close as possible.” She looked down at the ground, then clung tighter to the tree. “Okay, I now this is kinda scary your first time, but just look at the sun or at me, alright?”

       She nodded her head, and slowly she started to turn to me and placed her back flush with the tree. I leaned over to the side and pulled up the rope, after a few minutes I had it all up and pooled around my arm. I scooted closer and tossed a loop around Sophia’s head. “Now lean forward slightly.” she did that and I moved the rope down lower till it reached her lower back. I then leaned forward and with both arms I managed to loop the rope through the loop on the tree and then tightened it around her stomach. “Too tight?”

       “Just a little bit.” She admitted, then took in a deep breath. I loosened it a smidge and looked up at her. “That’s fine, I think.”

       I nodded and tied a knot, trying not to tighten it too tight. “Alright, know it’s my turn.”

       “How do you know how to do this?” she asks as I turn around and scoot back. “And why is there a pink skull on your backpack?”

       I blush at the pink skull bit, but I shake my head and wrap the rope around my stomach, making sure to go underneath my ruger. The tree groaned slightly. “The backpack was made more towards women of short stature, but a lot of small guys used to buy them.” I twisted slightly and threaded the rope between Sophia’s, she had to suck in a breath every time the knots came trough. “And you’ll have to be more specific on what I learned.”

       “How did you know how to take down the walkers? And this sleeping in a tree thing?” I scooted further back into Sophia, and stiffened as she wrapped her arms around my waist, under the rope above the pack strap.

       ‘Come here kiddie, don’t you wanna sit in santa’s lap?’ I remembered, and shuddered as I could remember the mans voice.

       I counted to ten, then let out a deep breath. “The tree thing I got out of a book, and the walkers, well my grandparents were firm believers in that children should learn to take care of themselves. Plus, they already had me doing stuff similar to this, I guess. They were paranoid in a way when it came to society, so when I came along, they kinda went doomsday prepper. We also had a retired KGB woman who lived next to us, so she showed me a few things along with grandma and grandpa.” I tightened the rope and then tied it into a knot.

       Sophia thought about it for a minute before she spoke. “Where’s your grandparents? Are you alone?”

       I glared at the setting sun, my hand gripping the pistol grips of ruger. “My grandma and grandpa died almost two months ago back when we were all in Alabama. I’ve made it here all by myself.” I had found a toyota corolla a few days after everything went to shit, one of the newer ones that got like 40 miles to the gallon. I had cleared Alabama within a day of finding it, and the tank ran dry about 80 miles into Georgia. It was kind of fun driving on a stack of phonebooks, especially when my butt was already torn up from-

       “Where are your parents?” she asks, interrupting my thoughts.

       I sighed and leaned my head back against her, it was kinda nice being held by someone, or at least by someone who wasn’t a walker. “My dad went to prison more often then I remember for petty stuff, like gas station robbery and all that jazz. His last strike was when I was seven. My mom, well, I don’t know what happened to her.”

       She tightened her grip around me, her doll resting between her two hands. “My dad died a few days ago.” She said it sorrowful, but I heard something like happiness to it.

       “I take it he was a dick?”

       She waited a few seconds, then. “He was a monster.”

       I nodded my head. “And people think that walkers are the only problems around.”

       She didn’t say anything for a minute. “I have to get back to my mom.” A pang of pity went through me. Her mother was probably a walker by now. “The others are probably worried as well.”

       That got me to stiffen. “Others?” I ask quietly. More people, potentially dangerous people that could-

       “You can join us.” Sophia exclaimed happily. “I’m sure Rick and the others would let you join us. I mean, you can take down three walkers by yourself, and your only 12!”

       “SHH.” I warn her, then we both listen for walkers, and heard nothing. “Look, I’m not sure that’s sure a good idea. I’m not much a fan of groups, I think I’d rather just be by myself.”

       “But why?” she asks. “Don’t you get lonely?”

       I kept silent. I was lonely, but I wasn’t alone, I had me, and, I had it. “Look, where was the last place you saw your mother?”

       She sighed. “On the highway, we had all stopped to look for food and stuff, then out of nowhere all these walkers came along. Hundreds of them, all of them just following the road.” Roamers, they were basically just walkers that gathered as a group because one walker decided to follow a noise or something, the others just followed along. Pack, or hive mentality is what I think its called, grandpa said it every once in a while, I didn’t know what it meant. “We all hid under cars or on top of the RV, I was underneath a car, when I thought they were all gone, I got out from underneath it, but a walker was there. It chased me to a creek with another one, but Rick came after me. When I got down to the creek, he told me to wait under some tree roots while he distracted them, he said to go back to the road as soon as the coast was clear. I did what he said, but….” She sniffed. “I got lost.”

       I rested a hand on hers. “It’s going to be fine now.” I hope. “Look, I’ll take you to the road and then I’ll give you a gun and you can go find your mother. I’m sure she’s either sitting in a car or left some sort of message after the rest of the group found a safe spot to hide at for the meantime.” God I hope I wasn’t lying through my ass, I really didn’t want to have to deal with a crying girl, or at least train some kid who’s probably got a victims mentality.

       I thought pot calling the kettle black viciously. I was in the same boat as her, hell I still am.

       “No please, don’t leave me on my own.” She begged, holding me tighter. “I… I”

       Damn it, I just have to be a nice guy. “Fine, I’ll take you to your mother.” She hugged me and giggled. “But I’m leaving after that, understand?”

       She sighed. “Fine.” She sat silent for a moment. “I hope we find her soon, trees are uncomfortable.”

       I chuckled and nodded my head. “Yeah, that’s why I wear baggy clothes, they can make cushions. Don’t worry, you get used to it after a while. Just wait till we find a multi story house or a tinted car that’s off the ground.”

       “Why?”

       “Because in a house with two stories, we can clear it out, sleep in one of the top bedrooms, and if walkers show up and breech the doors, we can climb out the window. In a car though, that’s trickier. It can’t be a clear coated window or else a wandering walker could see us. And it has to have some space between the seats on the floor.”

      “Why the floor?”

      I sigh and look up. Twenty questions isn’t my favorite game. “Because its easier to cover up with blankets or a tarp when your sitting in the floor. If we sit in the chairs and sleep, the walkers would investigate the fact that our chest are moving up and down, and blankets or tarps fall off easier when your lying on your back in a chair. Trust me, found out the hard way.” Yeah, grandma and grandpa up front, and you wake up in the middle of the night to find a rotting flesh snapping at your through a broken window.

      “Alright, I’ll take your word for it.” she says.

      “You hungry or thirsty?” I ask. My pack had a built in water bladder with a tuber tube and a stopper at the end you bite down and sucked on to drink. I also had a few granola bars in my bag, found a box of them in a car.

      “A little thirsty, I don’t think I could eat anything after all that.” Good point. I pick up the rubber hose end and curve it over my shoulder, she grabs it. “How do-”

      “Bite down on the end and suck, there’s distilled water inside my bag.” she doesn’t say anything, but soon I hear the noise of running water. “Don’t drink to much, I am not waking up in the middle of the night to help you down to use the bathroom.”

      She stops and lets go. “Thanks that was good.”

      “Your welcome, now get to sleep. We’re gonna have a long day tomorrow.”

      “Alright…. And Micah.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Thank you.” She says, then I feel her head on my neck, breathing in softly.

      “Yeah, your welcome.” I say to her, then close my eyes. Don’t let this be a mistake.


	2. Home away from hell

**Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters of The Walking Dead, just my OC’s.**

I slowly opened my eyes and groaned as small rays of sunlight flooded my vision. Putting up a hand to block the light, I started to rub sleep out of my eyes. My movement must of woken up Sophia, because she yawned and moved her hand. The tree groaned as she started to move.

“Be still.” I whisper at her, she immediately stops and holds her breath.

“Walkers?” she asks worriedly.

“No, but now that you mention it.” I bring up the ruger slowly and look around, slowly surveying the surrounding area, trying to find any trace of the undead. So far though, only the actual dead bodies of the walkers I had killed yesterday. “Alright, I see nothing.” I inform Sophia. “But move slowly, I’m not sure if this tree branch can hold this much wait without cracking.”

She quickly stiffens and her arms become more vice like around my waist. “Sorry.”

I sigh, bringing down the ruger. “It’s fine.” My stomach growls, as does Sophia’s, and my mouth is beyond dry. “Breakfast?”

She lets out a squeak of happiness and bounces real quick, but stops as the tree moan. “Sorry.” She says.

I laugh. “It’s fine, now in the main compartment of my pack, you’ll find some pop-tarts in there.”

“Are you serious?” she ask, her voice full of anticipation. I smirk and nod my head. “Oh my god, I haven’t had a pop-tart in forever.” She exclaims happily, and then I hear the zipper on my bag open, and soon I’m leaning forward while she’s rummaging through it. I hear her let out a cry, and then i feel her hand being quickly pulled out, and the sound of rustling foil. “Here” She says, putting a hand over my shoulder, I see a shiny foil package.

“Thanks.” I tell her, taking the package. “I got rid of the boxes a while ago, I think its either cinnamon roll or chocolate chip cookie dough.” I shrug and unwrap my package, and I see that my package is the cookie dough.

Sophia quickly opens up her pack, and let I hear her hold a breath. “Oh my god, cookie dough.” She says happily, then I soon hear gasp of air.

“Hey now, slow bites.” I instruct, I didn’t want to have to perform CPR in a tree, I barely knew how to do it on the ground. She spews sorry, spewing the back of my neck with crumbs. “Eww. It’s fine, just savoring the bites, I only have about six packs left.” I had found a delivery truck on the side of the room about four weeks ago, and it was full of unhealthy breakfast foods that tasted better than they should have. I spent about half an hour figuring out how much I could carry without being a burden, and I had worked out how much I could have as well. Now, I only had enough for three more days between the two of us for breakfast, not including the scenario that would involve my duffel getting lost or jacked.

She lets out of moan. “This taste amazing.” She says happily.

I look at mine and break off a bite, and eat it. I savored the flavor as best as I could while rushing it. “Yeah, well get used to it, cause they are only for breakfast, got it?”

She mumbled something with her mouth full. She gulped and croaked, “Water.” I chuckle and give her the nozzle.

“Alright, I don’t know how much food you ate with your group, but with me, it’s only breakfast and dinner at around five, if we get lucky today, I may break out a granola bar and split it between us for lunch.”

She gulped down the water and put the nozzle back over my shoulder. “Is that all you eat?”

I shrug my shoulders and bite into the pop-tart. Rationing is a logical solution to conserve food, same goes for water and everything else. I swallow the food and look down at the ground, the walkers bodies were starting to bloat more and more, good. “Hurry up and eat, we need to get down and get going.”

“Are we going to search for my mom?” she ask, then takes a bite. I hear her munching on it.

I sigh. “We’ll start, but honestly, I’m lost in these woods as well. I know that the road is north of here, and that’s pretty much it. I’d say first thing we need to do is get out of here and find a gas station in the remote part of this place or find a house. Then try to find a map of the area.”

“Wait, you’re lost too.” Sophia says. I nod my head and finish off my breakfast. “Then how do you know the roads north of here?”

I yawned and took a sip of water from the nozzle. “I know because I have an outdated road map that’s about three years old. It only gives me the routes of roads and highways, so I can’t see exactly where everything is except major highways and freeways.” I pointed towards the way Sophia had come from when she was getting chased yesterday. “That ways north, but I’m pretty sure that we’ll have a long ways walk to get to the road.”

She sighed and pouted I think, then I heard her eat some more. After a few more minutes of her eating and me looking around, she finally crumpled up the packet. “Where do I put this?”

I shrug my shoulders. “It doesn’t exactly retain heat, and it’s too easily torn and makes too much noise. I know it’s not exactly ‘green’, but toss it.” she didn’t complain and the next thing I see out of the corner of my eye is a shiny wadded ball falling to the ground. “Alright, now zip up my pack and we’ll work our way down the tree.” I hear the metal teeth closing together. “Move your arms and legs around before we start to get down. The blood needs to get going before we do, or else we’ll have some serious trouble if we run into some walkers.”

“I’m going to look right stupid waving my arms and legs around.” Sophia says.

I laugh and start to kick my legs in slow circles, arms as well. “I don’t think it’s time to be self conscious, not like a walkers gonna judge what they eat.” Pins and needles started working up my arms and knees, time to get the blood a flowing. Sophia groans and starts to do a midair jumping jack behind me.

“I feel stupid.” She complains softly. “And my legs feel like rubber.”

“You were running for your life in a forest from three walkers, you wouldn’t exactly feel tip top if you were normal.” The pins and needles were slowly fading away, I groaned and twisted my neck till it popped. “Now, you ready?”

She took a few more minutes to stretch before she answered, “Yeah.”

“Alright then.” I used my hands to find the end of the rope and start to untie it, when I get done I quickly turn around and undo the knot around Sophia’s waist. “Scoot forward, turn around slowly, and try to climb down the tree, I won’t take down the rope yet, so it gives you a little bit of a cheat.”

She looked at me worriedly. “I don’t-”

“It’s fine.” I tell her. “All you need to do, is grab ahold rope with two hands, look down, or not if your squeamish, then step on each branch on your way down. The last couple of feet though, you’ll have to do what I call the fireman’s pool.” I put my hands up, one on top of another, and brought my legs out straight apart in a V. “When you go down, grip both parts of the rope with your hands on top, and then you press your feet together like this.” I push the inside curve of my feet around the branch. “When you want to go down a knot, just slowly let you feet apart, then inch your hands down.”

She looked at me worriedly then at the ground. “But what if walkers come along?”

I smile and pull up my ruger. “It’s okay, I’ll have your back.”

She looks at the rope, then at the tree branches, then back to me. “I’ll…I’ll try.” She gulped. I nodded and brought up my ruger and clicked off the safety, my eyes alert and scanning the area. I heard the branch groan slightly and lift up an inch, I knew she had gotten off the branch. I took a quick peek at Sophia to see her as she put two feet on two staggered branches, her hands on the rope. I bring my eyes back up, and for the next 15 minutes I keep looking down at Sophia as she gets closer and closer to the ground and looking around for walkers. Nothing, that is beyond belief.

Sophia lets out a soft yelp, I quickly look down and bring around the ruger and point it down, eyes ready and finger on the trigger. How the hell did a walker get past me? I actually look down and see Sophia slowly getting up and rubbing her but. “Are you all right?” I call down, scanning about quickly.

“Yeah.” She calls up softly. I nod my head and put down my ruger, then turn to the tree and unlink the d-link and drop it down next to Sophia, the rope attached quickly following.

I look back down at Sophia. “Hid behind the bush were I put my duffel bag, you need be hidden in case a walker comes by.” She nods and then goes to the bush and ducks behind it. I put the ruger on safe and turn around and place one foot on the branch, then take a deep breath. The hardest part of tree climbing I’ve learned, is getting down safely, well, after trying to get to the first big branch that is. Slowly, I make my way down, having to reposition my feet a couple of times. You know what’s funny? When the national guard brought that big 20 foot rock climbing wall, I only made it a third of the way up before slipping, then falling down and landing on my ass, while everyone else landed on their feet.

I was halfway before I finally missed a beat and slipped slightly, I vaulted forward and did a monkey grab to the trunk, breathing heavily. I looked down and felt a pang of fear. “Breath Micah, breath.” I tell myself, then count to ten. I took one more final breath and then began to climb back down, I was about 15 feet off the ground, and the branches stopped around eight feet up from it, so I was going to have to make a barrel roll landing. I made the rest of the seven feet before I stopped and stood on top of last big branch, it creaked slightly. I took one big breath and shakily began to undo my thigh holsters. I didn’t want to do a barrel roll landing with the Kel-tec and my blades, I’d crush the kel-tec’s magazines and probably end up stabbing myself, I am that unlucky. The buckle of my gun holster wasn’t moving, and I was struggling to get it off when I heard a loud snapping/creaking noise.

The branch shakes, then starts to bend downward towards the earth. “Oh-” I’m cut short as the branch gives way out from beneath my feet, pitching me forward as it snaps. I unconsciously step forward along the branch and lean back, and my surprise and dumbfoundment turns to awareness as my feet slide. The world turns at an angle as I see the ground fast approaching and I feel myself leaning further and further back. Sophia shouts something as my feet loose contact with the ground and I feel the back of my jeans scrape the tree bark and start to slide.

It finally hit me that the branch had given way and I was sliding towards earth, and with my legs parallel with the tree and not bent. Grunting, I bend my elbows and reach out my hand and try to grasp something as I get closer and closer to the ground, it seemed to just rush up at me. A branch smacked me in the fact as I got closer and closer to the ground, I snatched my hand out and scraped my palms along the bark, then I abruptly came to a jarring stop as my hand finally caught the joint between two branches. I grunted in pain as I felt my arm extend and a near white hot pain in the joint, my hand was straining and cramping, the pain coming off in quick waves, but I felt my hand slipping. I groaned in pain and defiance as I felt my grip lessen, then, the branch snapped again. My hand no longer was holding anything, and for a split second, I felt like Wily Coyote from the old looney tunes reruns, just standing then air. If only I had the sign.

Next thing, I land on the balls of my feet and instinctively roll forward. I make it about two rolls before I stop and look forward, my head rolling and my vision bursting full of stars. “Micah.” I hear Sophia say far off in the distance, or at least in my distance of hearing perception. “MICAH!” she screams.

“SHH!” I whisper loudly at her. “Keep it down.”

“Sorry.” She says dejectedly.

I stick out my hand. “Help me up quickly, we need to check my weapons and then get going. The sounds most defiantly going to draw them here.” She grabs my hand, my right and not my left, my left arm was feeling like shit. She pulled slightly, but I had to lever myself up, man, we are going to have to work on her muscle strength.

“Are you alright?” she asks as I begin to pat myself all over to check for open lacerations and wounds. None so far, and all my blades and pointy objects weren’t inside my liver or spleen, so I think I’m good at the physical level so far.

“Yeah, I’m fine, do me a favor and grab my duffel and pull it out.” I say while bringing up my ruger and checking it over. My scope seemed to be fine, no screws on the mounts broken, everything attached. I pulled the cocking lever back halfway to check if I could, and popped the magazine out as well, nothing wrong yet. I look up to see Sophia pulling my duffel along on the wheels, my camo netting bunched up under her arm. I point to the ground in front of me. “Put it down here.”

She does what I ask and I bend down to unzip it all. “What are you doing?” she ask, then I hear her gasp as the full view of my stock comes to her eyes. I had some MRE’s, about 6 boxes of .22 Long rilfe ammo, 550 bullet packages. Four boxes of .22 Mag, 250 bullets each. I had a mini cleaning kit, a few more knives and screwdrivers. Cans of food stacked, a few other goods of food and other necessities, and on top of them all was a skate board that i had found. It was a good source of transportation when all your gas is gone on a highway. With my duffel behind me, it worked well, though I looked right stupid on it because I only learned how to use it about a month ago. But, what I was looking for, is a black shoulder holster, with a gun handle sticking out of it, and my little pouch next to if full of special .22 ammo. The only odd thing in the entire bag, was the black rotary phone that took up one corner.

I pull out the pouch and the shoulder rig, then close the duffel and zip it up after putting the camo netting in it. “We need to do this quickly, stick out your arms and then we need to do something about the walkers.”

She looked around hurriedly. “What walkers?” she asks worriedly.

I wave my hand dismissively at her. “The ones from yesterday, now, stick out your arms, you need to learn how to shoot.”

“But-”

I get up and glare at her. “Look, I can’t protect you 24/7, and if you get separated from your group again after I drop you off, you need to learn how to protect yourself.” I step forward and hold up the shoulder rig and spread it out. “Now, arms out, and turn around!” I order. She looks at me hurt like, then angry.

“Fine.” She spits at me, then holds out her arms and turns around, pointing them back at me, her doll in one hand.

I step forward and slip her arms through the arm holes, assuming she was right handed so the gun holster was on her left side. I then tighten up the straps to fit her and fold the loose ends up behind her. “Now, the gun in the holster is a revolver, more specifically, a Taurus Model 990. It’s a .22 long rifle handgun, but it’s loaded with a different kind of ammo that you can’t use in a gun that cycle automatically or on recoil and blowback.”

I tug step back and study the rig as it sits on her, then shake my head in confidence. “What do you mean, different kind of ammo?” Sophia asks, as she turns around to look at me, putting her arms down and looking at the rig.

I picked up the handle of the duffel and began to walk to the dead walkers. “Come on, I’ll tell you as we get to more work.”

“What do you mean?” she ask, then quickly steps up behind me as we get closer and closer to the to the dead walkers.

“The ammo is called Aguila .22 super colibri. It doesn’t use gunpowder like regular bullets, instead its air compressed on the inside. When the striker hits the rim of the cartridge, the bullet goes off and it makes little noise. But without gunpowder, the pressures can’t build up so you can’t get enough recoil out of it to activate the cycling action. That’s why the revolver is nessacary.” I get to the suit walker and lay down the duffel and pull out my Kukiri blade and crouch down. “Now, this is the disgusting part, but it’s safer to do this before we go on.” I motion for her to crouch down with me, and take a big gulp, and nearly gag as the smell of rotting corpse hits my tastebuds. Smell can lead to taste, if it’s powerful enough.

“What do you mean?” She ask.

I look at her and raise an eyebrow. “You knew, you sound like a broken record.” She glowers at me and crouches down. “And to tell you the truth, this is actually just a long shot at working.”

“So what are we doing?”

I sigh and nod to the walker, being careful to listen to the surrounds. “Have you noticed that the dead repel the dead?”

“No.” She says. “But I’ve heard about it from Rick and the Glen. They did it when they were in Atlanta.”

“What’d they do?” we needed to get going, but this may be a good idea for later.

She shrugs. “Al I heard was it was disgusting.”

Sighing, I look back down at the walker. “Well, what I’ve learned, is that the dead can smell the difference between the living and the actual dead.” I placed the tip of the Kukiri on the walkers stomach. “And that smell, can allow you to walk among the walkers, or the more favorable method, let them walk right past you without even glancing at you.”

“You’re not gonna do what I think your gonna do?” she asks.

I turn to her, and smile evilly, then stab the walker in the stomach and pull up, allowing a gust of vomit worthy gas into our faces. Sophia gags, then turns to the side and tosses her cookies, I almost follow her, but I stare up at the sky and swallow down the bile. It smell like a dead skunk, stuffed into a pile of pig shit that’s been roasting in the sun. What’s sad is that I can say I’ve actually smelled that, trips to a farm are not fun. I give her a pity pat on the back as she stops hocking it up.

She slaps away my hand and glares at me. “Your… your sick.”

I sigh and get up. “Yeah, well, you need to crack a few eggs and all those clichés. It is worst the first time, but you needed it, as did I.” I motion with the bloody kukri. “now come on, we’ve got two more, but this time, you can hold your breath and close your eyes.” She grumbles something, then gets up and follows, oh, the redneck walker is going to be oh so fun.

-later that day-

I don’t know how long we’ve been walking, the sun is little more than halfway up in the sky, so I’d say around 12 or past it. The other two walkers, well, that was a little bit more tricky. The lady walker, she had some sort of pussy packet in her stomach, and it popped the moment I poked her stomach. Sophia gagged, but didn’t hurl, cookie for her, now, the redneck walker, whole nother story.

He was beyond bloated, and beyond bloated means one of two things, he recently ate, or lots and lots of gas. We got the latter of the two events. When I stabbed into it, it was like someone let loose a geyser of rotting and fester heated gas. I admit, I threw up at that one, way to strong of a smell.

After my tossing my cookie scene, we had picked up and walked off in the way of which Sophia came yesterday. We both gargled some water and took a mouth full to wash down the fluids we needed.

So far, we only saw woods, woods, and woods. No walkers, people, animals, nothing.

“Hey Micah?” Sophia asks after our long bought of silence.

“Yeah?”

“Where are you from originally?”

“Conway, Arkansas.” I tell her automatically. I miss the place, and the noise. One thing that went away with people, was the natural noise of manmade machinery and vehicles. Moans and groans and gunshots got old, or scary. The silence these days was deafening.

“How did you get here? You’re a long way from home.”

I shrug and step over a root and drag the duffel over it as well. “Well, we got halfway through Alabama, Grandma, Grandpa and me. We we’re on the way to some prison here in Kentucky to find my dad. They still held out on the idea that they, we, could be a family once again.” They were so hopeful that no one would care if a criminal was loose when the dead are walking around. I chuckle sadly and look up as I continue along the makeshift path of the north point. “You know what’s so stupid, I still hold out that hope. That’s why I made it to Georgia here by myself, I still think dad’s alive. The big ol softie.”

She waited a beat before starting back up. “What happened to your grandparents? You said that you all came this way. What happened in Alabama?”

I stopped and stiffened. Memories flashed in my hand, memories that no one needed to have. Faint traces of pain crawled up and down my body as small tears formed in my eyes. I shook my head and sniffed. “It…it doesn’t matter now.”

“But-”

“Sophia.” I tell her lowly, turning around and glaring at her with dead eyes. “Drop it. What happened, happened. No helping it, no preventing it, no way of keeping it from playing it over and over again. I see it when I sleep, when I close my eyes. It hurts enough as it is, I’m not stabbing that knife into me again. So, drop it.”

I turn around and start walking again, quickening my pace and my duffel clacking slightly. Sophia walks behind me and keeps silent.

I correct my course more so where I’m walking north, and soon we’re walking along a slightly used path.

“Micah.” She says again.

“I thought I said drop it.” I snap at her.

“It’s not that.” She says quietly.

“Oh. Sorry.” I say, then take a few more steps. “What was your question?”

“Wha…what are you exactly?” she sounded embarrassed for asking, and she should be if she’s asking what I think she’s asking.

“Come again?”

“Are you black or…” she lets the sentence hand.

“I’m half, mom was black, and dad was lilly white. I have the picture somewhere in there.” I say, nodding my head at my duffel. “Dad always kept it to show me what mom looked like, before she got pregnant with me at least.” Grandma insisted on bringing a small collection of family photo’s, and she said that when we got dad that he’d be glad we’d brought along the picture of him and mom holding each other, mom smiling slightly as she stares. Dad holding her from behind, beaming as all day.

“I’m sorry, it was just… well, my dad… he…” sounds like someone was raised by a racist.

“It’s fine, I understand perfectly.” Not really though. I barely looked like my mother skin wise, I was more a pale mocha color, and it only got paler in some parts. I never really got hasseled for being half black, mainly it was because my dad was a convict and mom left after I was born.

“Oh.” She says, then I hear her stumble suddenly. I quickly whirl around, dropping the duffel and bringing up my ruger.

“What is it?” I ask, my eyes scanning the area, ears alert over the beating of my heart.

I see her bend down and pick something up, it looked like plastic and rubber. It was a rectangle with a circular hole on it, black and red all around with rounded corners, Sony written on the front. The red looked like rubber as it wrapped around the edges. I lowered the ruger and stepped forward as Sophia twisted it around in her hand.

“I think it’s a camera.” Sophia says, then holds it in both hands and I see on the back some buttons, rubbery plastic coating it, a small screen on the back.

“Yeah, well, it probably doesn’t work.” I tell her, then reach around and grab the duffel handle and turn to her. I saw something as I was turning, it was a clearing about fifteen feet away from us, but it was somewhat obscured.

Sophia pressed something, and I heard a little chime. She holds it up to me and smirks. “Wanna bet on that one buddy?”

I don’t respond to her, I only just take a step forward and look at the clearing. I saw the shadowed outlines of something in it, something that didn’t belong in the forest.

“Hey.” She says. “There’s some video’s on here.” I ignore her and continue to walk a few steps, then hear Sophia gasp. I slowly turn to her, then I race back to her when I see her widen eyes and look of shock.

“What is it?” I ask, then lean over her arm and look at the screen, and instantly regret it.

On the screen, it was dark as the video played, little sound coming out of it. A pale orange light glowed around in the video, illuminating the profiles of a group of men, none of them looked like women. The camera shaked in Sophia’s hand as the video pans to see a man tied to a tree trunk was crying. The video camera moves and soon I see the outline of a big blue tent with the front entrance unzipped with a man getting out of it. the man straighten himself up and zipped up his pants, a wicked look of satisfaction and pleasure that made me shudder. I gripped my ruger tightly as I caught a glimpse of long hair in the tent, disheveled and thrown about, then I saw a pale and small arm go up into the hair and rub something. The man that got out of the tent came over to the camera and began to speak to it, the camera shaked and then the man grabbed it and turned it around. It showed the former cameraman, a scrawny tall guy that barely looked to be in his 20’s, his face long and pale, his hair black. The screen flashed, and it said low battery on it.

Sophia gasped again and nearly dropped the camera, she put a hand to her mouth and raised her head up, tears in her eyes. “They…. That… th…”

I turn to the clearing again and glare at it. “Stay behind me.” a fresh anger was boiling inside of me, and so was the feeling of despair. I started walking to the clearing, Sophia gasped more and more, I could tell she wasn’t trying to cry. The video probably started off worse, and she saw it all. Damn it.

As I got closer and closer to the clearing, I brought up my ruger and expected the worse. I looked through the clearing as I reached it and found the scene identical to the one in the video. The blue tent across from me, the entrance zippered, and next to it was a tree. I sobered up immediately and looked at the tree and what was attached. “Sophia.” I say, turning around to face her. “You’ll either learn this lesson farther along in your life, but you need to learn it if you want to survive.”

“What are you talking about?” she looks around the camp worriedly.

I look into her eyes and see worry and fear. “You need to learn that walkers aren’t just the only danger in this world. That the more dangerous ones out there are alive, and they are more monstrous than walkers.”

She hangs her head low and whispers. “People.”

I nod my head. “Now, what you saw on that video, that’s only a glimpse of what happens. It only gets worse after everything is said and done, cause then these bastards… they get ‘creative’. It’s what they do afterwards that makes it even worse. But what I’m asking you is, do you want to learn this lesson now, or later?”

She grips her doll hard to her chest, and winces as the revolver digs into her side. The holster looks so big against her, entirely disproportional. “I…i… I want to help. I don’t want to be afraid.”

It was my turn to look away. “No, you need to be afraid, or at least a little bit. This lesson, its not to cure fear, but to show that you need to fight. Not for others, not for me, but for you. You need to fight to survive at all cost, or else….” I let the sentence hang. Grandpa always said that the words unspoken are the worst ones. “I learnt this lesson myself, it isn’t one that any person should learn. But, we need to, you need to.”

She looks at me, and I meet her eyes. Uncertainty, fear, worry… intrigue. “I’ll…. I’ll do it.” she says quietly but firmly.

I sigh and step to the side and let her eyes adjust. They grow wide in shock, her mouth slowly opens to a full ‘O’, and the color drains from her face. I look at the tree and only see… I only see what it is.

The man from the video, a mousy man that wore glasses and had slicked back hair, his walker body was tied around the trunk of the tree. He snapped at us with fleshless jaws, the skin bitten off, showing teeth. His arms wiggled slightly as his head thrashed about, glasses hanging from one chewed on ear, his nose gone. Brown dried blood covered his plaid shirt, his legs practically nothing but bones. The bastards that had tied him to a tree while they…they did what they did to the person in the tent, they never cut him loose or put a bullet in his brain, they left him for walker bait. They fucking left him to be eaten slowly until he died from shock or blood loss and came back.

“Do you see what I mean Sophia?” I ask her as I step forward and stick out my hand. I turn to her as she slides down to her knees, tears forming. “I need your gun Sophia, I need to put him out of his misery.”

She sobs and looks at me, hate and despair filled, tears streaming. “Why? Why? WHY?” she asks crying. I get down to one knee and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Because those men, those people. They were sick. They got high and drunk on power over life and death, over being able to take what they want without consequences. They lost what society kept in balance, morality and humanity.” I put my hand to the holster and unsnapped the strap, then pulled out the revolver and stood back up. “They weren’t men Sophia, they weren’t human.” I tell her as I walk to the walker. “They were monsters, they ARE monsters. And monsters need to be killed.” I was a foot away from the walker, it looked at me with a hunger filled gaze that only made me feel cold inside. I raised up the revolver and pulled back the hammer until it snapped into place. This was my first gun to fire, it belonged to dad, he had used it to robe a liquor store once. “I’m sorry.” I whisper. “I’m sorry this happened to you, to her.” ….to me.

I pulled the trigger, and a quiet pop rang out. The walkers head tilted backwards slightly, blood didn’t come out the other side, the bullet didn’t have that much force, it finally fell forward, still and relaxed. A tear escaped my eye as memories flooded back to me, painful ones, fearful ones, the most depressing ones of all time that only a few shared these days. I sniffed and wiped away at my eyes, then heard a shuffling.

I quickly whirled around and looked at the tent to see a large gash in the side facing the tree,  there was something moving inside it. I slowly stepped forward to it and crouched down to peer through it, only to see a milky gaze of hunger stare back. I looked at it as a hand reached through the gash and grasped for me, the fingers were broken at odd angles, a bite missing from the thin wrist. I quietly put the barrel of the revolver to the forehead of the walker, and pulled the trigger. It sagged into the gash, and then spilled out of if, the gash got bigger with the tearing noise, revealing inside. I gagged at the smell and sight. There wasn’t just one walker in there, there was two. I looked at this one, and down at the other one. Both wore no clothes at all, but they wore bites, bruises and wounds that looked old in the open wound walker way. I notice with a scarring sickness, that both of the walkers were no more than 15, three years older than me and Sophia, and both were girls.

“Bastards.” I curse, gripping the handle of the revolver tightly as I saw the walker try to shuffle to me, her legs dragging behind her.

“Micah.” I hear Sophia say softly, then the crunching of her shoes.

I don’t take my eyes off the walker. “Yes Sophia?”

She sniffs. “I… I think I need to do this.”

I don’t say anything, I just keep my eyes on the walker. “Are you sure?”

“…Yes.” She finally says, then she’s standing beside me, her arm outstretched.

I slowly hand her the gun, she grips it tightly, then looks at the walker and raises it to eye level. “Use your wrist and fingers to support it, not your arm.” I tell her, she corrects her hold on it, then grips it with two hands. “Now, line up the end sight in between and level with the two rear sights.” She closes one eye and repositions the revolver. “Remember Sophia.” I tell her as I look at the walker girl. She reached out with one hand and hissed. “She didn’t deserve this, not her, not her sister, not her father. She didn’t do anything to deserve this, no one does.” Sophia lets more tears roll. “Make her suffering end. Make it all stop.” I tell her.

“I’m sorry.” She cries, and then pulls the trigger.

-a few hours later-

“I’ll be right outside the door if you need me, alright?” I ask her.

She nods, her eyes puffy and swollen, cheeks red and tear stained. “Thank you.” She chokes.

I nod, then close the door. Sighing, I slide against the bathroom door onto the floor and look at the empty bedroom. After Sophia shot the walker, I had found a local area map inside the tent, along with blood, lots of it. I spent the next five minutes throwing up alongside Sophia, then we were on our way to the road. The bastards had picked them clean, and I’m kicking myself for actually thinking that I would have readily took those supplies. I wish we could have buried them, or burn them at least.

Shortly after leaving the campsite, we had heard a gunshot, one that was distant and sounded like a rifle gunshot. Sophia had been worried that it was them, the bastards. But I had told her that I wouldn’t let that happen to her, to her mother, to me. the last part I had said to myself.

After about three hours of walking, the sunlight getting close to disappearing, we had found this house out in the middle of nowhere. It was a two story with an attic, old and nearly rustic, and perfect for us. I had quickly went through the house and picked off two walkers in it, then dragged them to a separate room and barricaded the doors slightly. After scrounging for food, we found a few cans of sardines. I had said eww, but she ate them without complaint. It was only after that did she break down crying and sobbing.

I had held her as she cried, my own tears falling at points, then I told her it would be a good idea to go to bed. I went to the upstairs room and found a good set of linens and a pillow and laid them out inside the big bathtub in the bathroom. She needed the sleep more than I did, and the chances of a walker walking into the house was to good, someone needed to watch the door to the bedroom.

Sighing once again, I let the tired feeling of despair and the draining feeling of tiredness take over as I slumped down. I couldn’t hold them back any further, the tears started to come down. I held back my sobs as they continued to fall like a river.

My duffel sitting next to me suddenly starting ringing, loud like a bell. I scrambled to unzip it, and without looking, I placed my hands on the rotary phone inside and pulled it out. It didn’t vibrate as I sat it in my lap. It rang once more.

I picked up the receiver and put it to my ear, a choked sob escaped my lips. “Grandma.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters of The Walking Dead, just my OC’s.**

**Otakugurl, thanks for your input, but personally I have no problem with Sophia, in fact I was inspired by her death in the show to write this because they never truly gave her that amount of time to develop her character. But if you ask me, Carl and Andrea are personally not my favorites. After all, if you ask anyone where Carl is, the answer given is definitely ‘not in the house’. Kinda annoying in ya ask me. And Andrea, yea, her character is played extremely well but is also…well bitchy. Though it’s kinda a toss up between her and Lori though in my opinion.**

**Anyway, thanks to everyone who has read this story and supported it, and to anyone reading this on archiveofourown.org, I’m sorry about the format the way it was transferred to online, I’m not used to it, try to fix that in a little bit.**

I peeked out from behind the lightning struck tree Rosa had told me about and spied two walkers heading the opposite way I needed to go. I looked right and saw that there was a slightly worn path through the woods, just small patches of dirt and compacted spots of dead leaves. I looked around some more and could have sworn I saw more things moving around trees, but i didn’t have time for all of this. It was probably nine in the morning, or around that. And Rosa said that the road to the highway was three miles long, so if the wooden trail bisected that, it meant that it was shorter than that hopefully.

I hope to god so, cause it takes me nearly an hour to complete a mile, actually, over an hour. And that was just by walking, and lord knows that I’m gonna have to walk and run a lot today, and that’s not even counting the possibility of a twisted or broken ankle. “Wow, I am pessimistic.” I mutter lowly, then watch as the walkers stumble off the road and into the ditch and fall over each other into it. I took in a breath and started into a light sprint down the less beaten path, hah I finally can use that proverb in a real life situation! I attempted to stay inside the patches of dirt and compacted leaves, hoping to make as little noise as possible. I followed the trail for about ten minutes until the leaves got less compacted down in spots and there was less dirt patches on the ground.

I stopped and leaned against a tree and worked off my pack and unzipped it and pulled out my road map and compass along with my pen. The road map was almost  foot tall and six inches long and from 2003 and I had marked all the towns I’d pass through or by on the highway and major road areas. Last place I was in was around Carrollton, and I had to go down from there, and by my count I had past or near Newnan. Sophia said that her group had come down from Atlanta after the CDC there blew up. So if we where around Newnan, always good to have a little bit of doubt . So that leaves two options of highways if going down, US 29 or the I-85. If my map was shoddily correct, then the best chance would be the 29. I dotted a slight dash down 29 and then used the compass, I needed to go southwest in a general line downward.

I put up the map and pen and hung the compass around my neck and then zip the pack up and back on my shoulders. So far there wasn’t any walkers around, but I needed to get going. Moving once again I followed the more compacted pathway, over a few hills and past plenty of fallen trees, and god help me if I found grandma’s house out here, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. About twenty minutes after I stopped and checked the map I came across a walker. It used to be an old woman wearing a dark grey dress that was probably used for every day wear. Her face was practically gone and one eye hanged down loosely attached to a nerve. A large chunk of her front jaw was gone, as if she had gotten it broken, someone must have hit her face or she fell and hit her jaw on something solid. Skin hung loose on her throat and I saw a slight crater at the base of her neck and saw a bit of her spine gleaming through. No, she was no longer alive, it was an it, a walker, and it saw me and let loose a harsh whispery groan and stumbled to me.

I raised up the ruger and popped the walker in the remaining eye just a hair away from its nose and not all that center. The ruger made a bark and it echoed slightly, staying longer in the air. The walker dropped to the ground and then I saw four more stumble over a hill thirty feet away from me. “Shit.” I curse and look through the scope and bring the cross hairs up on the first walker in the middle, a former man that was probably a farmer, I dropped it and moved to the next one, teenager with it’s cheek bones showing. It fell when I pulled the trigger and rolled down the hill a few feet as I dropped the other two, twenty something’s that both looked like from out of town. I breathed in multiple times in an attempt to calm my nerves and bring down my heartbeat, and then I heard a few branches snap as well as some leaves moving. I needed to go.

I broke off in the direction I was heading in before in a slight jog, trying to bring down my breathing once again. my ears rang slightly with a beating drum as my feet pounded on the ground and I jumped over a rotting log. “Five in the magazine, one in the chamber.” I whisper to myself as I mindless kept on running. “Five spent outta thirty-one, 26 bullets left. 75 in the speed loader, takes one minute to pull out and load up.” This was my way of coping with stress, stating the obvious was my way of trying to calm myself, help get through the rush. I turned slightly to see moving figures in the shadows between trees, swaying as I moved past. Damn, how many of those things are in the forest?

Then I remembered something grandpa said near the beginning of this whole nightmare. ‘ _Think of it like a pack of wolves, when there’s food around they’ll stay and eat and hunt. But when they run out of food, the pack will migrate to different areas. Moving from a area of low density to high density, like your grandmother after she eats something with beans.’_ I smirk at the memory of grandma smacking grandpa upside the head and then slid slightly on a group of leaves and stopped and doubled over to breathe. “Alright Micah, stop and think. Breathe, just breathe.” I take in a deep breath and lean back and let it loose slowly. I looked around and saw nothing outright, but I heard shuffling, slight but I could hear it. my legs were almost vibrating still as I heard another shuffle. Time to go.

Walking and stopping to listen every now and then, that was how the next hour and forty or so minutes went by, spent my time stopped by marking trees near the base with the tomahawk with a straight line. Saw plenty of forms of walkers go in different directions when I moved. I had to actually stop and hide behind a tree every now and then while a walker came by, which is what I was doing now. There were two walkers on the opposite side of tree, one I had caught a glimpse of was a short woman that had to lean forward to shuffle along. The other one I knew for sure was taller and ahead of the shorter one by a few feet. I had the kukri and the tomahawk in hand and ready to use, I needed to use hand to hand every once in awhile or else I wouldn’t really get a better hand at it. I looked to my left and saw a steep hill, a lot steeper than any of the natural ones, and through a few glimpses in the daylight and trees I saw something like a dull shine of metal. I think I found the road.

I turned to my left and found the taller walker turn to me and stare, and that’s when I threw the  tomahawk at him. It buried into cheek left of the nose and cut partially into its eye and it staggered back slightly. Crap, I knew I forgot to sharpen something. That or I need to work on my wrist snap technique. I whirled around the tree the opposite way and saw the short walker turn to the tree right as I step up behind it. I held the kukri in a reverse manner in my left hand and brought it up diagonally at the walkers head. I met plenty of resistance at first when I hit under it’s ear, but after I put some more force into twisting my body, it cut through the skull and the top part when flying off and a small spray of blood hit the tree as the kukri came free. It fell forward in a heap and I stepped around it and towards tall walker as it started moving forward. I ducked under it’s outstretched arm and cut the back of it’s leg and kicked it. it went down and then I brought back the kukri across it’s neck, my arm jarring slightly until it finally left the skin and bone. The walker attempted to twist around as I brought up my leg and kicked it in the back and it down on its face. I stepped up on the back, jumped up and brought my foot down on the back of it’s sliced open neck and the walker stopped moving. I pulled out my screwdriver in my right hand and then drove it up into the back of it’s skull and twisted for good measure to be safe.

The screwdriver pulled out easily and I holstered it as well as the kukri and then tried to turn over the walker. It took a good couple of shoves and grunts to finally turn it the hell over and then I growled in annoyance as I saw that my tomahawk was buried into the skull further than before, almost to the metal stem. I gripped the handle with both hands, put my foot on the walkers chest and pulled. My foot went through a rib and jolted me slightly. “SHIT!” I curse aloud as I pulled out my foot and see a little bit of fleshy rotted goo on the bottom of my shoe. “EEWW!!” I say as I wipe off my shoe on the leaves.

I sighed and repositioned myself at the walkers head and bent over and gripped the tomahawk with both hands again, started wiggling it back and forth, and then I pulled backwards with a lot of might, and it came free and sent me back and onto my ass. I kicked out at the walker one last time before I got up and brushed myself off and then holstered the tomahawk and sighed again then headed off to the hill. I had to climb up on my hands and almost my knees as well before I reached a guard rail. I stopped at the bottom and brought out the ruger and looked around. Where I was, there wasn’t any cars, but I could see plenty of them to my right

No obvious walkers about, in fact I didn’t see anything moving except for a bird in the sky. So I got up and hopped the guard rail, took two times to do it though, damn my being short! The moment my feet hit the asphalt I felt a little bit better, kinda missed the hard surface of it. the cars where about almost half a mile away, and the biggest one I saw looked like a transport truck or something. Walking closer I saw remnants of trash scattered about, and that some of those cars were packed full of stuff, personal belongings probably. Grandma actually packed about three boxes full of pictures, baby clothes and blankets of the like. Grandpa didn’t argue when she put them in the car, but she argued when we stuck it inside a abandoned storage area in Russellville and slapped a lock on it. He at least let her take a small book of family pictures, half recent the other half older. It’s actually in the flap compartment of the duffel back at the house.

I reached some tan colored car and then was able to see the entire picture of all the cars. Plenty where just stuck in the lanes at awkward angle, some turned over, and almost all of them looked to have been abandoned for about a few months. I looked around so more and saw multiple possibilities as to what I take, scavenging, not something I’d ever thought to do. I looked back behind me and saw nothing coming, so I decided to march on ahead. Sophia said that there was a water truck near where she had hidden under another truck.  Walking along, I found bits of dried blood scraped along the ground with speckles of flesh sprinkling the road randomly. Walkers must have come along at some time, but I still don’t know if this is the spot where Sophia’s group was. My stomach growled a little bit and my mouth was dry. Gonna have ta take a rest sometime before I work my way back to the house.

Walking forward, there was suddenly this almost pale yellow mustang that stuck out. The reason why was because when I looked through the window there was some writing on the front windshield  written in some yellow kind of paint. If I wanted to spend thirty minutes being stupid and try to read it backwards, I couldn’t have because there where things on the front hood that blocked it. I brought up the ruger in case and started walking forward. You know how cops in the movies come in and sweep their guns back and forth? Imagine that but with a kid the size of a second grader and then you’ll laugh, you’re laughing at me.

Reaching the front of the car I finally was able to read the message and see what everything was. “Sophia Stay Here, We Will Come Every Day.” I read aloud softly as I point the ruger skyward with one hand. There was a blanket, bottle of water, jar of peanut butter and the other miscellaneous staples on the hood of the car. Aren’t they afraid of someone coming along and taking it? Or of some other group staying here to ambush them? How smart are these people again? I sigh and shake my head and look around more. “You say you’ll come every day, but what’s the time and limit?” I mutter to myself aloud.

So many cars, so many possibilities, of what is the question though. Overturned cars, open ones full of flies and dead bodies, stains of blood everywhere. Was this a graveyard or what? My stomach growled some more and I pulled the water hose up and took in some water to calm it down. Gotta find some car high off the ground for a short bit, where’s that water truck? “Llllleeeetttssss see, roll top side, roll top side.” I smirked when I found it, across the road, pale brown with shiny side doors that showed that it was collapsible. I started jogging to it and got there in no time and started jiggling the handle and it popped open. Looking inside there wasn’t anything surprising, in fact it was quite nice. Smiling I pull myself up into the truck and close and lock the door behind me and do the same for the other side and relax visibly onto the passenger seat and set the pack down in the floor in front of me and pulled out a zip lock bag that had a three day old pop-tart, singular. I pulled it out and started eating while taking liberal sips from the water bladder.

Eating nothing but pop-tarts is a terrible idea on all accounts, but I can’t exactly just go out and eat a full rounded breakfast now can I? Finishing off the last of the pop-tart I took in a few more gulps of water and sighed and relaxed back into the chair some more. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep so much, I felt so tired. My eyes started closing slowly and I felt the sleep getting to me, slowly creeping along. Oh great, I could never go to sleep all that well when the world wasn’t in hell’s hand basket, but now that there’s a major threat of getting eating alive but undead geeks I can just close my eyes and la la land comes along. I slapped myself in the face to keep awake and then remembered that the magazines needed to be reloaded slightly. Groaning I pull up my pack and pull out the speed loader and the ruger at the same time.

The speed loader is basically just a plastic contraction that you pour in the .22 bullets and shake it till the bullets go face down into the line underneath the catch. Attach the magazine to the well and then crank the shaft and it turns a bullet into magazine, loading it. I did that and counted to five and let it loose and then took a spare one and popped it into the pipe and closed the action and then popped the magazine home. Sleep still wanted to hit me, and god I wanted to let it come at me and just let it take control, but I need to get back to them soon. Tomorrow we can make our way here and- “RRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGG” I jump and look around, my throat starts to clog up slightly and I don’t know why. Another ring sounds and I brought up the ruger out of pure conditioning as another ring sounds. “What the hell is going on?” then I see something out of the corner of my eye pass by in a run.

I press up to the window as another ring sounds and see someone running past a car on it’s side. “WAIT!” I yell and start to open the door, then I remember my pack and zip it up and open the door while sweeping it onto my back as I hop down from the truck and look for a head, it zipped through more cars and I followed by running as another ring sounded, it sounded far off and coming from the person. I ran over the dividing lane between the two roads and started after the person. “STOP!” I yell at the person as it runs past more cars. So glad I can at least run a good distance easily, cause I am going to have to haul ass to catch them. Another telephone ring, old style and not new, more realistic and bell like. The person dodged around another car and broke into a straight sprint down the road, I stopped and brought up the ruger to fix the sights of the scope on the person’s back, their hair was long and almost grey and they were about as tall as Rosa and wore grey on grey clothes. “STOP!” I yell again and then another ring, louder and sharper in pitch and tone. I wince in pain and clutch my ear and double over, when I come back up the person was gone, but the ringing wasn’t it.

“Where did you go?” I ask aloud as I walk faster to where the person last was. The ringing was getting longer but softer in tone. I tried to run faster to get closer but it just stayed the same, never increasing nor decreasing. On and on I walked and in some burst I ran, up until I reached a speed limit sign and then stopped to look around when the ringing stopped. The person was gone, the ringing was gone, and my blood was flowing now. Someone is screwing with me, I’m sure of it. But why did that person look so familiar to me now? Sighing, I turn around and see how far I had gone from the graveyard of cars and my entrance from the woods, when I saw walkers climb up over the guard rail and onto the road about half a mile away from me. “Oh shit.” I say in shock, and then I turn around and expect my duffel to be behind me so I can pull out my skateboard, but then I remembered… it was at the house. I look back up to see more walkers come up onto the road and fall onto it, and that’s when I turned and ran.

I stayed close to the side of the road though at a distance from the guard rail, I didn’t know how fast I was going, everything was a blur. The ruger was swishing back and forth and my pack was slipping slightly as my feet carried away with my legs behind them. I needed to actually fix the straps that attached the two arm straps together across my chest and around my waist. I needed to get away, I needed to survive, I needed… I needed… I wanted to run away from everything, straight from this nightmare and into Grandma and Grandpa’s arms back home in Conway. I didn’t want to go back to Rosa or Sophia, I wanted to go home, to forget about everything, the blood and smell of the rotting and unconsecrated biting dead as they shambled after anything with a pulse. To forget about the true blackness of a human soul as they could do such horrible things to such undeserving people and instead just wanted to hear about it from the news. A walker came up ahead and I stopped quickly and put it down and breathed deeply.

“Stop it Micah, stop it.” I say as I smack myself again as I lower the ruger. I looked down and saw the dangling buckles of my backpack and quickly as I caught my breath. I couldn’t just abandon them, it wasn’t right. Sophia at least deserves a better life, hell, so do Rosa and I. This world would be so much better if everyone could actually depend on another and make smart decisions. I couldn’t let them just die, I couldn’t just abandon them for my own safety cause I was scared. I breath in deeply again and turn to look at the group of walkers a ways back, then I saw how much distance was between us, damn near a whole mile and a half. “Dayum.” I say surprised. I bring up the ruger and look through the scope to watch them. They shuffled along down the road towards the cars a ways, but instead of going forward they made a slight turn and crossed the road and fanned outward. I felt the wind hit my face and smiled widely, they couldn’t catch my scent that easily with the wind blowing in my way.

No time to stop and smell the rotting roses now, gotta keep moving, have to keep moving. I turned and started running again down the road, hoping to god to put some distance behind them and me. God, how far away did Rosa say that road was that connected here?

 

 

 

My legs where killing me, thank god not literally though. A poorly kept road was what a found two mile markers away from the speed limit sign. It took me a loooonnnngggg time to actually run down it, only three walkers appeared the entire time in front of me, three more bullets gone from the magazines. There was a four way stop with street signs that went off somewhere, I took a left and started running again till I came to a three way traffic stop where the lightning struck tree I had to find first before turning into the woods. From then on I went straight ahead and then onto a little dirt road that led up to the house. At the moment, I was resting against a tree sixty or so yards away from the house, breathing heavily. Thank god I haven’t had any cramps in my leg, but god I needed to go to the fucking bathroom badly.

I was winded and thirsty, the sky was turning orangish in color, darker and darker with each passing time. So damn close, and now I just wanna give up and sit down. Well, screw that, I wanted to sleep, drink and use the fricken bathroom. I grunted as I pushed myself away from the tree and stumbled forward, god I hope Rosa doesn’t shoot me cause of my walker impression, that would just suck donkey balls.  I got close to the door and then it opened up and Sophia walked out and smiled at me hugely. “You’re back.” she says and then hugs me tightly, I groan and she lets go quickly.

“Tired.” I grunt cavemanish and then walk into the house to find Rosa standing in the kitchen doorway with one of my small pots in hand with steam coming out of it. I took a wiff of the air and started salivating as I smelled pasta, cheap cheese and peas. “Oh beautiful goddess let thy grace of food bless mine lips.” I plead dramitcally as I drop down to my knees in front of her.

She smirks and cocks an eye brow. “Okay Shakespeare, get up off the floor and use the bathroom out back. Dinner is going to be cold soon if you don’t hurry the hell up.”

“Can’t I just use the one upstairs?” I wail lowly in a hoarse whisper.

“And where the hell do you think that water pressure to run it is gonna come from?” she asks mockingly. Oh right, wow I’m stupid. I hang my head in defeat and shuffle to the back door, but Sophia stops me and hands me a roll of toilet paper. DOH!

“Are you alright?” she asks worriedly as I nod and take the roll.

“At the moment, I’m just tired.” I tell her as I take off my pack and lean it up to a door. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“Use the shovel out back to dig a hole behind the house.” Rosa tells me. “And if you get shit on my shovel, I’ll bury you with it.” she warns.

“Yeah, and don’t use my propane tanks to much or I’ll burn you with them.” I throw back. she stuck out her tongue at me and went back into the kitchen, I saw my little burner top and propane tank in the floor. I sigh and head out the back door and do my business as quick as I could and bury it. have to say, Rosa has good tastes in shovels, it was red and black handle with a large black spade ending, lightweight but with a great balance. I wipe it on the ground for good measure and bring it in with me and close the door. The house smelled better than before and my stomach rumbled. Getting back to the kitchen I found them taking apart my mini burner and getting ready to go upstairs. “How long was I gone?” I ask them.

“You left at what, nine?” Rosa asks rhetorically as she looks at her wrist, why didn’t I see that watch in the first place? “It’s about six thirty now, so… damn your slow.” She says with a mock as she heads to the stairs with Sophia behind her.

“I’m a short twelve year old trekking through woods filled with undead corpses.” I tell her as I walk up after her. “Speaking of which, we are going to have to be really careful tomorrow, one wrong noise and we’re happy meals.” The shovel banged on the step and I winced at the noise as we finally reached the second floor and head off towards the room.

“Did you find the road?” Sophia asks impatiently as we get into the room and I close the door behind us and lean the shovel next to it. “Did you see anyone, Momma? Rick? Daryl?”

“Let him relax his muscles a little bit.” Rosa says with a slight scold as she sets the steaming pan down on a little square of dirty and messy socks that look to big for any of us. “You,” she says looking at me. “sit down and rub your leg muscles, not exactly a cool down but it will have to do.”

I salute her and do what she says after taking off the pack and started rubbing my legs, groaning in pleasure as the tension was starting to release. She pulled two wide plastic cups with handles attached and spooned in some of the pot’s contents, it looked like a mixture of ramen noodles and mac and cheese mixed with assorted vegetables and stuck plastic forks in them. She handed one to Sophia and started eating herself as I went further up my legs for about ten minutes or so. Then I finally stopped when my fingers started to go numb and Rosa handed me the cup she was using and filled it full of the pasta mix. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” She says as she cradles her shotgun, I spy the barrel as I fork in dinner and see that it was plenty shorter than before. She smirked and looked down. “Yeah, took a hour or so with breaks but we finally got it.” she says smugly, Sophia held the same look on her face.

“Did you take something smooth and rub down the inside of the muzzle?” I ask her between bites.

“What for?” she asks confused.

I stop and swallow and find the cup empty. “When you’re sawing down the barrel, you actually push some strands of metal inward and pokes into the muzzle of the barrel. If you don’t rub it out or down then it alters the spread pattern of the pellets.” She gives me the ‘Huh?’ look and Sophia just stares at me.

“How do you know that?” Sophia asks.

“It’s what my grandpa told me.”

“Don’t believe everything your grandparents tell you.” Rosa said dryly. I shrug and grab the tube from my pack and take a long chug. “So, where’d you get to?”

“I made it to the road and I also found your big bunch of cars as well.” I say looking at Sophia who has a huge look of happiness on her face. “And they left a message for you as well.”

“What’d they say?” she asks giddily.

“To wait in the graveyard of cars and that they come every day.”  Then I stop and think. “Actually it was more like stay put and we’ll come back every day, but that was about it.” I yawn and then shake my head. “I stopped for I don’t know how long to eat and rest inside a truck, I thought it was a few minutes but I guess it was longer, anyway, I get out of the truck and start heading back and then walkers start pouring out onto the road.” They didn’t need to know about the person, or the ringing. This was just for me, it’s my problem. “So I had to take the actual route you were talking about Rosa, and that’s why it to so long to get back here.”

She nodded and split the last of the food up, two portions in the cups and one more left and handed them to us. “How many did you take out?”

I stopped and thought for a second. Then started counting on my hands. “uh, four that I shot.. no that’s five at first, then two more I got with knives, and four more after that.”

“So that makes eleven dead heads no more.” Rosa concludes with a smile.

“Don’t forget this morning,” Sophia says happily. “you have twelve Micah, and after you left I got three more.” She smirks at that one as I blink at her stupidly.

“We had a group of them come along, well five to be exact.” Rosa informs me as she eats out of the pan with another fork. “I used the shovel on two while Sophia sniped them off, nice ammo by the way, perfect noise quality.”

“Oh.” I say quietly as I finish off the rest of dinner. “So what do we do with plates?” I ask. “Or cups in this situation.”

Rosa snaps her fingers and reaches into her cart and pulls out a tall smart water bottle that had a yellow tint to it. I don’t think it’s lemonade. “We use this.”

“Is that pee?” Sophia asks disturbed, I was with her on that one.

“Don’t knock it sweetie,” Rosa says with a smirk. “people been using piss to clean shit since the Roman times, before then as well.”

“I know that urine is sterile and all from t.v” I say as I inch away from her. “But how can it be sterile enough to clean something?”

She smirked at me and sat the bottle down. “If you let it sit and settle, ammonia builds up in it and you can clean about anything with it, clothes as well.”

“Well, I learned something today.” Sophia says, then wrinkles her nose at it and sighs. “I guess I’ll do it since I haven’t done much today, can I clean it in the sink downstairs?”

“Just be careful.” We tell her, and then Rosa passes her a clean rag from her cart.

“Use this, wet it with the stuff and scrub away, and remember, be careful.” She says finally. Sophia nods and takes everything downstairs with her, but leaving the door open. “She’s a sweet kid ya know?”

“And what am I? Chopped liver?” she scoffs and rustles the hair on my head.

“Come on Mr. Badass, go get some sleep, you earned it.” she says boredly happy.

“This early?” I ask surprised.

“It’s only seven, and I had my nap today while Sophia stood guard at the door, so it’s your turn till around one tonight, then it’s her turn.” Rosa said as she picked me up and started pushing me to the door. “Now shoo, it’s about time me and Sophia had girl talk anyway, boy/girl talk with you tomorrow.” She then closes the door on me as I stare in disbelief.

“Are you fricken kidding me?” I ask through the door.

“Get some sleep!” she replies with a snigger. I try the door handle and she laughs when it doesn’t open. “Told you!” I sigh in defeat and look at the tub, it had more useable bedding and an extra blanket, I still had my knives and guns, so oh well.

“Fine,” I tell her finally as I head to the tub. “Goodnight, tell Sophia the same.”

“Can do.” She says as I hop in and settle down. Curling up into a ball I pull the bedding up over my head and sigh as I lay on the pillow. God this felt comfortable, but no way in hell am I going to sleep so quickly. Then I close my eyes and the world goes black.


	4. Fearful Endeavour

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters of The Walking Dead, just my OC’s.

Otakugurl, thanks for your input, but personally I have no problem with Sophia, in fact I was inspired by her death in the show to write this because they never truly gave her that amount of time to develop her character. But if you ask me, Carl and Andrea are personally not my favorites. After all, if you ask anyone where Carl is, the answer given is definitely ‘not in the house’. Kinda annoying in ya ask me. And Andrea, yea, her character is played extremely well but is also…well bitchy. Though it’s kinda a toss up between her and Lori though in my opinion.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has read this story and supported it, and to anyone reading this on archiveofourown.org, I’m sorry about the format the way it was transferred to online, I’m not used to it, try to fix that in a little bit.

I peeked out from behind the lightning struck tree Rosa had told me about and spied two walkers heading the opposite way I needed to go. I looked right and saw that there was a slightly worn path through the woods, just small patches of dirt and compacted spots of dead leaves. I looked around some more and could have sworn I saw more things moving around trees, but i didn’t have time for all of this. It was probably nine in the morning, or around that. And Rosa said that the road to the highway was three miles long, so if the wooden trail bisected that, it meant that it was shorter than that hopefully.

I hope to god so, cause it takes me nearly an hour to complete a mile, actually, over an hour. And that was just by walking, and lord knows that I’m gonna have to walk and run a lot today, and that’s not even counting the possibility of a twisted or broken ankle. “Wow, I am pessimistic.” I mutter lowly, then watch as the walkers stumble off the road and into the ditch and fall over each other into it. I took in a breath and started into a light sprint down the less beaten path, hah I finally can use that proverb in a real life situation! I attempted to stay inside the patches of dirt and compacted leaves, hoping to make as little noise as possible. I followed the trail for about ten minutes until the leaves got less compacted down in spots and there was less dirt patches on the ground.

I stopped and leaned against a tree and worked off my pack and unzipped it and pulled out my road map and compass along with my pen. The road map was almost  foot tall and six inches long and from 2003 and I had marked all the towns I’d pass through or by on the highway and major road areas. Last place I was in was around Carrollton, and I had to go down from there, and by my count I had past or near Newnan. Sophia said that her group had come down from Atlanta after the CDC there blew up. So if we where around Newnan, always good to have a little bit of doubt . So that leaves two options of highways if going down, US 29 or the I-85. If my map was shoddily correct, then the best chance would be the 29. I dotted a slight dash down 29 and then used the compass, I needed to go southwest in a general line downward.

I put up the map and pen and hung the compass around my neck and then zip the pack up and back on my shoulders. So far there wasn’t any walkers around, but I needed to get going. Moving once again I followed the more compacted pathway, over a few hills and past plenty of fallen trees, and god help me if I found grandma’s house out here, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. About twenty minutes after I stopped and checked the map I came across a walker. It used to be an old woman wearing a dark grey dress that was probably used for every day wear. Her face was practically gone and one eye hanged down loosely attached to a nerve. A large chunk of her front jaw was gone, as if she had gotten it broken, someone must have hit her face or she fell and hit her jaw on something solid. Skin hung loose on her throat and I saw a slight crater at the base of her neck and saw a bit of her spine gleaming through. No, she was no longer alive, it was an it, a walker, and it saw me and let loose a harsh whispery groan and stumbled to me. 

I raised up the ruger and popped the walker in the remaining eye just a hair away from its nose and not all that center. The ruger made a bark and it echoed slightly, staying longer in the air. The walker dropped to the ground and then I saw four more stumble over a hill thirty feet away from me. “Shit.” I curse and look through the scope and bring the cross hairs up on the first walker in the middle, a former man that was probably a farmer, I dropped it and moved to the next one, teenager with it’s cheek bones showing. It fell when I pulled the trigger and rolled down the hill a few feet as I dropped the other two, twenty something’s that both looked like from out of town. I breathed in multiple times in an attempt to calm my nerves and bring down my heartbeat, and then I heard a few branches snap as well as some leaves moving. I needed to go.

I broke off in the direction I was heading in before in a slight jog, trying to bring down my breathing once again. my ears rang slightly with a beating drum as my feet pounded on the ground and I jumped over a rotting log. “Five in the magazine, one in the chamber.” I whisper to myself as I mindless kept on running. “Five spent outta thirty-one, 26 bullets left. 75 in the speed loader, takes one minute to pull out and load up.” This was my way of coping with stress, stating the obvious was my way of trying to calm myself, help get through the rush. I turned slightly to see moving figures in the shadows between trees, swaying as I moved past. Damn, how many of those things are in the forest?

Then I remembered something grandpa said near the beginning of this whole nightmare. ‘Think of it like a pack of wolves, when there’s food around they’ll stay and eat and hunt. But when they run out of food, the pack will migrate to different areas. Moving from a area of low density to high density, like your grandmother after she eats something with beans.’ I smirk at the memory of grandma smacking grandpa upside the head and then slid slightly on a group of leaves and stopped and doubled over to breathe. “Alright Micah, stop and think. Breathe, just breathe.” I take in a deep breath and lean back and let it loose slowly. I looked around and saw nothing outright, but I heard shuffling, slight but I could hear it. my legs were almost vibrating still as I heard another shuffle. Time to go. 

Walking and stopping to listen every now and then, that was how the next hour and forty or so minutes went by, spent my time stopped by marking trees near the base with the tomahawk with a straight line. Saw plenty of forms of walkers go in different directions when I moved. I had to actually stop and hide behind a tree every now and then while a walker came by, which is what I was doing now. There were two walkers on the opposite side of tree, one I had caught a glimpse of was a short woman that had to lean forward to shuffle along. The other one I knew for sure was taller and ahead of the shorter one by a few feet. I had the kukri and the tomahawk in hand and ready to use, I needed to use hand to hand every once in awhile or else I wouldn’t really get a better hand at it. I looked to my left and saw a steep hill, a lot steeper than any of the natural ones, and through a few glimpses in the daylight and trees I saw something like a dull shine of metal. I think I found the road.

I turned to my left and found the taller walker turn to me and stare, and that’s when I threw the  tomahawk at him. It buried into cheek left of the nose and cut partially into its eye and it staggered back slightly. Crap, I knew I forgot to sharpen something. That or I need to work on my wrist snap technique. I whirled around the tree the opposite way and saw the short walker turn to the tree right as I step up behind it. I held the kukri in a reverse manner in my left hand and brought it up diagonally at the walkers head. I met plenty of resistance at first when I hit under it’s ear, but after I put some more force into twisting my body, it cut through the skull and the top part when flying off and a small spray of blood hit the tree as the kukri came free. It fell forward in a heap and I stepped around it and towards tall walker as it started moving forward. I ducked under it’s outstretched arm and cut the back of it’s leg and kicked it. it went down and then I brought back the kukri across it’s neck, my arm jarring slightly until it finally left the skin and bone. The walker attempted to twist around as I brought up my leg and kicked it in the back and it down on its face. I stepped up on the back, jumped up and brought my foot down on the back of it’s sliced open neck and the walker stopped moving. I pulled out my screwdriver in my right hand and then drove it up into the back of it’s skull and twisted for good measure to be safe.

The screwdriver pulled out easily and I holstered it as well as the kukri and then tried to turn over the walker. It took a good couple of shoves and grunts to finally turn it the hell over and then I growled in annoyance as I saw that my tomahawk was buried into the skull further than before, almost to the metal stem. I gripped the handle with both hands, put my foot on the walkers chest and pulled. My foot went through a rib and jolted me slightly. “SHIT!” I curse aloud as I pulled out my foot and see a little bit of fleshy rotted goo on the bottom of my shoe. “EEWW!!” I say as I wipe off my shoe on the leaves.

I sighed and repositioned myself at the walkers head and bent over and gripped the tomahawk with both hands again, started wiggling it back and forth, and then I pulled backwards with a lot of might, and it came free and sent me back and onto my ass. I kicked out at the walker one last time before I got up and brushed myself off and then holstered the tomahawk and sighed again then headed off to the hill. I had to climb up on my hands and almost my knees as well before I reached a guard rail. I stopped at the bottom and brought out the ruger and looked around. Where I was, there wasn’t any cars, but I could see plenty of them to my right

No obvious walkers about, in fact I didn’t see anything moving except for a bird in the sky. So I got up and hopped the guard rail, took two times to do it though, damn my being short! The moment my feet hit the asphalt I felt a little bit better, kinda missed the hard surface of it. the cars where about almost half a mile away, and the biggest one I saw looked like a transport truck or something. Walking closer I saw remnants of trash scattered about, and that some of those cars were packed full of stuff, personal belongings probably. Grandma actually packed about three boxes full of pictures, baby clothes and blankets of the like. Grandpa didn’t argue when she put them in the car, but she argued when we stuck it inside a abandoned storage area in Russellville and slapped a lock on it. He at least let her take a small book of family pictures, half recent the other half older. It’s actually in the flap compartment of the duffel back at the house.

I reached some tan colored car and then was able to see the entire picture of all the cars. Plenty where just stuck in the lanes at awkward angle, some turned over, and almost all of them looked to have been abandoned for about a few months. I looked around so more and saw multiple possibilities as to what I take, scavenging, not something I’d ever thought to do. I looked back behind me and saw nothing coming, so I decided to march on ahead. Sophia said that there was a water truck near where she had hidden under another truck.  Walking along, I found bits of dried blood scraped along the ground with speckles of flesh sprinkling the road randomly. Walkers must have come along at some time, but I still don’t know if this is the spot where Sophia’s group was. My stomach growled a little bit and my mouth was dry. Gonna have ta take a rest sometime before I work my way back to the house.

Walking forward, there was suddenly this almost pale yellow mustang that stuck out. The reason why was because when I looked through the window there was some writing on the front windshield  written in some yellow kind of paint. If I wanted to spend thirty minutes being stupid and try to read it backwards, I couldn’t have because there where things on the front hood that blocked it. I brought up the ruger in case and started walking forward. You know how cops in the movies come in and sweep their guns back and forth? Imagine that but with a kid the size of a second grader and then you’ll laugh, you’re laughing at me.

Reaching the front of the car I finally was able to read the message and see what everything was. “Sophia Stay Here, We Will Come Every Day.” I read aloud softly as I point the ruger skyward with one hand. There was a blanket, bottle of water, jar of peanut butter and the other miscellaneous staples on the hood of the car. Aren’t they afraid of someone coming along and taking it? Or of some other group staying here to ambush them? How smart are these people again? I sigh and shake my head and look around more. “You say you’ll come every day, but what’s the time and limit?” I mutter to myself aloud.

So many cars, so many possibilities, of what is the question though. Overturned cars, open ones full of flies and dead bodies, stains of blood everywhere. Was this a graveyard or what? My stomach growled some more and I pulled the water hose up and took in some water to calm it down. Gotta find some car high off the ground for a short bit, where’s that water truck? “Llllleeeetttssss see, roll top side, roll top side.” I smirked when I found it, across the road, pale brown with shiny side doors that showed that it was collapsible. I started jogging to it and got there in no time and started jiggling the handle and it popped open. Looking inside there wasn’t anything surprising, in fact it was quite nice. Smiling I pull myself up into the truck and close and lock the door behind me and do the same for the other side and relax visibly onto the passenger seat and set the pack down in the floor in front of me and pulled out a zip lock bag that had a three day old pop-tart, singular. I pulled it out and started eating while taking liberal sips from the water bladder.

Eating nothing but pop-tarts is a terrible idea on all accounts, but I can’t exactly just go out and eat a full rounded breakfast now can I? Finishing off the last of the pop-tart I took in a few more gulps of water and sighed and relaxed back into the chair some more. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep so much, I felt so tired. My eyes started closing slowly and I felt the sleep getting to me, slowly creeping along. Oh great, I could never go to sleep all that well when the world wasn’t in hell’s hand basket, but now that there’s a major threat of getting eating alive but undead geeks I can just close my eyes and la la land comes along. I slapped myself in the face to keep awake and then remembered that the magazines needed to be reloaded slightly. Groaning I pull up my pack and pull out the speed loader and the ruger at the same time. 

The speed loader is basically just a plastic contraction that you pour in the .22 bullets and shake it till the bullets go face down into the line underneath the catch. Attach the magazine to the well and then crank the shaft and it turns a bullet into magazine, loading it. I did that and counted to five and let it loose and then took a spare one and popped it into the pipe and closed the action and then popped the magazine home. Sleep still wanted to hit me, and god I wanted to let it come at me and just let it take control, but I need to get back to them soon. Tomorrow we can make our way here and- “RRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGG” I jump and look around, my throat starts to clog up slightly and I don’t know why. Another ring sounds and I brought up the ruger out of pure conditioning as another ring sounds. “What the hell is going on?” then I see something out of the corner of my eye pass by in a run.

I press up to the window as another ring sounds and see someone running past a car on it’s side. “WAIT!” I yell and start to open the door, then I remember my pack and zip it up and open the door while sweeping it onto my back as I hop down from the truck and look for a head, it zipped through more cars and I followed by running as another ring sounded, it sounded far off and coming from the person. I ran over the dividing lane between the two roads and started after the person. “STOP!” I yell at the person as it runs past more cars. So glad I can at least run a good distance easily, cause I am going to have to haul ass to catch them. Another telephone ring, old style and not new, more realistic and bell like. The person dodged around another car and broke into a straight sprint down the road, I stopped and brought up the ruger to fix the sights of the scope on the person’s back, their hair was long and almost grey and they were about as tall as Rosa and wore grey on grey clothes. “STOP!” I yell again and then another ring, louder and sharper in pitch and tone. I wince in pain and clutch my ear and double over, when I come back up the person was gone, but the ringing wasn’t it.

“Where did you go?” I ask aloud as I walk faster to where the person last was. The ringing was getting longer but softer in tone. I tried to run faster to get closer but it just stayed the same, never increasing nor decreasing. On and on I walked and in some burst I ran, up until I reached a speed limit sign and then stopped to look around when the ringing stopped. The person was gone, the ringing was gone, and my blood was flowing now. Someone is screwing with me, I’m sure of it. But why did that person look so familiar to me now? Sighing, I turn around and see how far I had gone from the graveyard of cars and my entrance from the woods, when I saw walkers climb up over the guard rail and onto the road about half a mile away from me. “Oh shit.” I say in shock, and then I turn around and expect my duffel to be behind me so I can pull out my skateboard, but then I remembered… it was at the house. I look back up to see more walkers come up onto the road and fall onto it, and that’s when I turned and ran.

I stayed close to the side of the road though at a distance from the guard rail, I didn’t know how fast I was going, everything was a blur. The ruger was swishing back and forth and my pack was slipping slightly as my feet carried away with my legs behind them. I needed to actually fix the straps that attached the two arm straps together across my chest and around my waist. I needed to get away, I needed to survive, I needed… I needed… I wanted to run away from everything, straight from this nightmare and into Grandma and Grandpa’s arms back home in Conway. I didn’t want to go back to Rosa or Sophia, I wanted to go home, to forget about everything, the blood and smell of the rotting and unconsecrated biting dead as they shambled after anything with a pulse. To forget about the true blackness of a human soul as they could do such horrible things to such undeserving people and instead just wanted to hear about it from the news. A walker came up ahead and I stopped quickly and put it down and breathed deeply.

“Stop it Micah, stop it.” I say as I smack myself again as I lower the ruger. I looked down and saw the dangling buckles of my backpack and quickly as I caught my breath. I couldn’t just abandon them, it wasn’t right. Sophia at least deserves a better life, hell, so do Rosa and I. This world would be so much better if everyone could actually depend on another and make smart decisions. I couldn’t let them just die, I couldn’t just abandon them for my own safety cause I was scared. I breath in deeply again and turn to look at the group of walkers a ways back, then I saw how much distance was between us, damn near a whole mile and a half. “Dayum.” I say surprised. I bring up the ruger and look through the scope to watch them. They shuffled along down the road towards the cars a ways, but instead of going forward they made a slight turn and crossed the road and fanned outward. I felt the wind hit my face and smiled widely, they couldn’t catch my scent that easily with the wind blowing in my way.

No time to stop and smell the rotting roses now, gotta keep moving, have to keep moving. I turned and started running again down the road, hoping to god to put some distance behind them and me. God, how far away did Rosa say that road was that connected here? 

 

My legs where killing me, thank god not literally though. A poorly kept road was what a found two mile markers away from the speed limit sign. It took me a loooonnnngggg time to actually run down it, only three walkers appeared the entire time in front of me, three more bullets gone from the magazines. There was a four way stop with street signs that went off somewhere, I took a left and started running again till I came to a three way traffic stop where the lightning struck tree I had to find first before turning into the woods. From then on I went straight ahead and then onto a little dirt road that led up to the house. At the moment, I was resting against a tree sixty or so yards away from the house, breathing heavily. Thank god I haven’t had any cramps in my leg, but god I needed to go to the fucking bathroom badly.

I was winded and thirsty, the sky was turning orangish in color, darker and darker with each passing time. So damn close, and now I just wanna give up and sit down. Well, screw that, I wanted to sleep, drink and use the fricken bathroom. I grunted as I pushed myself away from the tree and stumbled forward, god I hope Rosa doesn’t shoot me cause of my walker impression, that would just suck donkey balls.  I got close to the door and then it opened up and Sophia walked out and smiled at me hugely. “You’re back.” she says and then hugs me tightly, I groan and she lets go quickly.

“Tired.” I grunt cavemanish and then walk into the house to find Rosa standing in the kitchen doorway with one of my small pots in hand with steam coming out of it. I took a wiff of the air and started salivating as I smelled pasta, cheap cheese and peas. “Oh beautiful goddess let thy grace of food bless mine lips.” I plead dramitcally as I drop down to my knees in front of her. 

She smirks and cocks an eye brow. “Okay Shakespeare, get up off the floor and use the bathroom out back. Dinner is going to be cold soon if you don’t hurry the hell up.”

“Can’t I just use the one upstairs?” I wail lowly in a hoarse whisper.

“And where the hell do you think that water pressure to run it is gonna come from?” she asks mockingly. Oh right, wow I’m stupid. I hang my head in defeat and shuffle to the back door, but Sophia stops me and hands me a roll of toilet paper. DOH! 

“Are you alright?” she asks worriedly as I nod and take the roll.

“At the moment, I’m just tired.” I tell her as I take off my pack and lean it up to a door. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“Use the shovel out back to dig a hole behind the house.” Rosa tells me. “And if you get shit on my shovel, I’ll bury you with it.” she warns.

“Yeah, and don’t use my propane tanks to much or I’ll burn you with them.” I throw back. she stuck out her tongue at me and went back into the kitchen, I saw my little burner top and propane tank in the floor. I sigh and head out the back door and do my business as quick as I could and bury it. have to say, Rosa has good tastes in shovels, it was red and black handle with a large black spade ending, lightweight but with a great balance. I wipe it on the ground for good measure and bring it in with me and close the door. The house smelled better than before and my stomach rumbled. Getting back to the kitchen I found them taking apart my mini burner and getting ready to go upstairs. “How long was I gone?” I ask them.

“You left at what, nine?” Rosa asks rhetorically as she looks at her wrist, why didn’t I see that watch in the first place? “It’s about six thirty now, so… damn your slow.” She says with a mock as she heads to the stairs with Sophia behind her.

“I’m a short twelve year old trekking through woods filled with undead corpses.” I tell her as I walk up after her. “Speaking of which, we are going to have to be really careful tomorrow, one wrong noise and we’re happy meals.” The shovel banged on the step and I winced at the noise as we finally reached the second floor and head off towards the room.

“Did you find the road?” Sophia asks impatiently as we get into the room and I close the door behind us and lean the shovel next to it. “Did you see anyone, Momma? Rick? Daryl?”

“Let him relax his muscles a little bit.” Rosa says with a slight scold as she sets the steaming pan down on a little square of dirty and messy socks that look to big for any of us. “You,” she says looking at me. “sit down and rub your leg muscles, not exactly a cool down but it will have to do.” 

I salute her and do what she says after taking off the pack and started rubbing my legs, groaning in pleasure as the tension was starting to release. She pulled two wide plastic cups with handles attached and spooned in some of the pot’s contents, it looked like a mixture of ramen noodles and mac and cheese mixed with assorted vegetables and stuck plastic forks in them. She handed one to Sophia and started eating herself as I went further up my legs for about ten minutes or so. Then I finally stopped when my fingers started to go numb and Rosa handed me the cup she was using and filled it full of the pasta mix. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” She says as she cradles her shotgun, I spy the barrel as I fork in dinner and see that it was plenty shorter than before. She smirked and looked down. “Yeah, took a hour or so with breaks but we finally got it.” she says smugly, Sophia held the same look on her face.

“Did you take something smooth and rub down the inside of the muzzle?” I ask her between bites.

“What for?” she asks confused.

I stop and swallow and find the cup empty. “When you’re sawing down the barrel, you actually push some strands of metal inward and pokes into the muzzle of the barrel. If you don’t rub it out or down then it alters the spread pattern of the pellets.” She gives me the ‘Huh?’ look and Sophia just stares at me.

“How do you know that?” Sophia asks.

“It’s what my grandpa told me.” 

“Don’t believe everything your grandparents tell you.” Rosa said dryly. I shrug and grab the tube from my pack and take a long chug. “So, where’d you get to?”

“I made it to the road and I also found your big bunch of cars as well.” I say looking at Sophia who has a huge look of happiness on her face. “And they left a message for you as well.”

“What’d they say?” she asks giddily. 

“To wait in the graveyard of cars and that they come every day.”  Then I stop and think. “Actually it was more like stay put and we’ll come back every day, but that was about it.” I yawn and then shake my head. “I stopped for I don’t know how long to eat and rest inside a truck, I thought it was a few minutes but I guess it was longer, anyway, I get out of the truck and start heading back and then walkers start pouring out onto the road.” They didn’t need to know about the person, or the ringing. This was just for me, it’s my problem. “So I had to take the actual route you were talking about Rosa, and that’s why it to so long to get back here.”

She nodded and split the last of the food up, two portions in the cups and one more left and handed them to us. “How many did you take out?”

I stopped and thought for a second. Then started counting on my hands. “uh, four that I shot.. no that’s five at first, then two more I got with knives, and four more after that.” 

“So that makes eleven dead heads no more.” Rosa concludes with a smile. 

“Don’t forget this morning,” Sophia says happily. “you have twelve Micah, and after you left I got three more.” She smirks at that one as I blink at her stupidly.

“We had a group of them come along, well five to be exact.” Rosa informs me as she eats out of the pan with another fork. “I used the shovel on two while Sophia sniped them off, nice ammo by the way, perfect noise quality.” 

“Oh.” I say quietly as I finish off the rest of dinner. “So what do we do with plates?” I ask. “Or cups in this situation.”

Rosa snaps her fingers and reaches into her cart and pulls out a tall smart water bottle that had a yellow tint to it. I don’t think it’s lemonade. “We use this.”

“Is that pee?” Sophia asks disturbed, I was with her on that one.

“Don’t knock it sweetie,” Rosa says with a smirk. “people been using piss to clean shit since the Roman times, before then as well.”

“I know that urine is sterile and all from t.v” I say as I inch away from her. “But how can it be sterile enough to clean something?”

She smirked at me and sat the bottle down. “If you let it sit and settle, ammonia builds up in it and you can clean about anything with it, clothes as well.” 

“Well, I learned something today.” Sophia says, then wrinkles her nose at it and sighs. “I guess I’ll do it since I haven’t done much today, can I clean it in the sink downstairs?” 

“Just be careful.” We tell her, and then Rosa passes her a clean rag from her cart.

“Use this, wet it with the stuff and scrub away, and remember, be careful.” She says finally. Sophia nods and takes everything downstairs with her, but leaving the door open. “She’s a sweet kid ya know?”

“And what am I? Chopped liver?” she scoffs and rustles the hair on my head.

“Come on Mr. Badass, go get some sleep, you earned it.” she says boredly happy.

“This early?” I ask surprised.

“It’s only seven, and I had my nap today while Sophia stood guard at the door, so it’s your turn till around one tonight, then it’s her turn.” Rosa said as she picked me up and started pushing me to the door. “Now shoo, it’s about time me and Sophia had girl talk anyway, boy/girl talk with you tomorrow.” She then closes the door on me as I stare in disbelief.

“Are you fricken kidding me?” I ask through the door.

“Get some sleep!” she replies with a snigger. I try the door handle and she laughs when it doesn’t open. “Told you!” I sigh in defeat and look at the tub, it had more useable bedding and an extra blanket, I still had my knives and guns, so oh well.

“Fine,” I tell her finally as I head to the tub. “Goodnight, tell Sophia the same.”

“Can do.” She says as I hop in and settle down. Curling up into a ball I pull the bedding up over my head and sigh as I lay on the pillow. God this felt comfortable, but no way in hell am I going to sleep so quickly. Then I close my eyes and the world goes black.

 


End file.
